Past and Present
by CarlieD
Summary: It was by far the weirdest thing they’d ever been through… The year is 2021 and James Potter and Fred Weasley, now notorious sixth-years, are about to get pulled into a crazy final month at Hogwarts, as they unexpectedly switch places with their namesakes
1. Switch!

**PAST AND PRESENT**

_It was by far the weirdest thing they'd ever been through… The year is 2021 and James Potter and Fred Weasley, now notorious sixth-years, are about to get pulled into a crazy final month at Hogwarts, as they unexpectedly switch places with their namesakes after an experiment gone awry._

DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of Harry Potter or his offspring.

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* * *

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Chapter 1: Switch!

"Ow!" 17-year-old James Potter exclaimed as he got an elbow in the side from his cousin. "Fred, stop it, you're hammering me!"

"Oh, sorry, Jay," 17-year-old Fred Weasley replied, swiftly moving so that Jay could advance and see what was going on. "Here, you think it's supposed to do that?"

"Do what?" Jay asked, eyeing the mirror sceptically. "That swirly thing?"

"Oh, move over, Jay, I can't see it any more," Fred said impatiently, shoving him aside. "Yeah, hey, look, I can see Dad and Uncle Fred. They're… Merlin, I think that's the early version of the Whizbangs! Jay, you _have_ to see this, this is so completely retro!"

"You think _that's_ retro," Jay scoffed. "Wait until you see my grandfather's era."

"Oh, Merlin, that's not retro, that's vintage. I mean, that would've been what, 1970s?" Fred studied the swirling picture curiously. "We are going to be –"

"Millionaires in our own rights," Jay finished. "My dad's family is old money, remember? Uncle George made his millions with the shop, Teddy's taking over for Ollivander, and we all know he's got a monopoly on the wand market…"

"And we are going to be the top inventors in the world!" Fred crowed, just as there came an explosion.

* * *

"Potter! Weasley!"

The two boys got to their feet, looking at each other in confusion before Professor McGonagall came striding out into the courtyard.

"Professor McGonagall!" the boys both chorused in innocent voices.

"Calamity," McGonagall declared, grabbing both boys by their ears, "runs in your family, apparently. Your fathers, your uncles, your grandfathers – yes, boys, Arthur Weasley was a troublemaker in his day! – not to mention you two! To the hospital wing! What were you concocting now?"

* * *

"Who the hell are you?" James hissed at the red-haired boy sitting on the bed across from him.

"Your partner-in-crime, apparently, and a relation of some sort," the boy replied cheerily. "Fred Weasley, pleased to make your acquaintance. You must be James Potter. You're clearly not Harry, since you don't have the scar. Quite the reputation you've got there, Prongs."

"Weasley?" James asked. "Any relation to Septimus?"

"Yep, that'd be my grandfather. Paternal."

"He's a cousin of some kind, a few times removed, I think, so we're pretty distant in relation. What's going on, you think?"

"I dunno," Fred shrugged, looking around the ward. "Hogwarts _looks_ all the same. Last thing I remember before the explosion was me and George – that's my twin – plotting our glorious departure. We were testing out the Whizbangs before the execution, and a dud exploded in our faces. What about you?"

"I was coming out of…" James stopped. He and Sirius and Peter had been exiting the Whomping Willow after a full moon. Peter hadn't held the knot long enough and James had gotten smashed by a branch. "A passage, I was coming out of a passage and got thrashed."

"Whomping Willow?" Fred asked knowingly. "Yeah, we know about the secret passage under there and how it was Lupin's little hidey-hole on full moon."

"Hold your tongue, Mr Weasley," Madame Pomfrey said briskly as she entered. "Lupin hasn't had a hair of a symptom since that night, let's not tempt fate. As if the scar wasn't enough of a reminder of it, he doesn't need his cousin belittling the experience. I'd like to see _you_ live through a night like that."

Both boys frowned at her at that declaration, and then the doors to the hospital wing opened and a young man in his early twenties came in, his sandy brown hair sporting blue and purple frosted tips. A deep, ugly set of parallel scars that crossed from his right temple across to his left jawbone marred his face, though he had a grin on his face, an almost patient expression in his voice as he said, "So, Jay? What's the damage this time?"

He looked like Remus, James thought in surprise, even as the young man took his wand from his hand and inspected it. Then his heart stopped as the man's face went suspicious.

"Whose wand is this?" he asked, running his own wand over it with a look of deep concentration.

"Mine," James replied uncertainly. "My parents bought it at Ollivander's almost seven years ago. You were there." It was true. Remus and his parents had been in Ollivander's at the same time as them.

"Jay, how many times have I repaired your wand for you? Fifty? A hundred? I know your wand, and this isn't it." He held it in his open hand, pointing his own wand at it. "Declare your original owner."

An ethereal voice floated out into the room. _"James Potter."_

"See?" James said defensively, reaching for his wand.

"Your structure, core and registration date."

_"Mahogany and dragon heartstring. Registered August 22, 1971."_

"197– " the man sputtered, then the light seemed to go on. "Oh, Merlin, you're not him. You're…" He stared at him for a moment. "Oh, that's not good." He whirled around to face Fred, who looked as utterly lost as himself. "Fred, what did you do?"

"I… don't know," Fred said indignantly. "I don't think you've got the right Fred, either, I'll tell you that right now. And somehow I don't think you're the Lupin I know."

"I don't know, what year do _you_ think it is?"

"Well, it's 1996, innit?"

"It's 1978," James spoke up hesitantly.

"You're both wrong," Whoever Lupin said, rubbing his temples. "Try 2021. Merlin, this is such great timing… so where's our boys?"

Both of them shrugged and shook their heads, just another teenage boy who looked similar to James entered. This one looked about fifteen. "So, Jay, you blew up the courtyard. Nice job, Filch is furious."

"You Potters seem to like blowing up Hogwarts," Lupin said semi-jokingly.

"Well, Dad didn't exactly _blow up_ Hogwarts, Teddy," the boy replied. "More like, he caused it to go up in flames."

"When did _that_ happen?" Fred asked without thinking.

The boy stared at him. "The battle of Hogwarts, dolt? The final battle? The big, bloody, fiery, lots-of-people-dying battle that finished the Second Dark War? Merlin, you must've hit your head pretty hard."

"Any way," Teddy said briskly, handing James back his wand after a brief, ugly silence. "I've got to get back to Diagon Alley, I don't need to repair any wands here..."

"Oh, before you go, can you repair the nick in mine?" the other boy asked, holding out his wand. "It's not like I'm Jay, Teddy, I don't damage my wand every other week."

"What happened to it, Al? You're usually pretty good with your wand."

"Bludger. Broke my arm guarding my wand, if that hits the sympathy chord."

"I really ought to start charging you two."

"You've already got access to our vault, remember?" Al laughed. "Dad gave you a key when you turned 17."

"How about _you_ tell him about James and I don't charge you?"

"I'm not telling him Jay blew up the school again! I told him last time, it's Lily's turn. Besides, she's Daddy's little Seeker princess, he won't get so mad at her, he's been on a short fuse lately."

"I'm not telling him!" came the indignant exclamation from a younger-still red-haired girl of about thirteen who walked in.

* * *

"You blew up the courtyard," came the semi-disbelieving, semi-amused, semi-exasperated, semi-furious statement from the dark-haired Auror who paced in front of James and Fred, who were both sitting silently in chairs.

"You blew up," the red-haired man on the Auror's other side repeated, "the damn courtyard."

"What the hell for?" the Auror finished. "You know how many people you could've endangered, James? Frederick? How many students you could've injured or killed or worse? How many things could've gone wrong –"

"Something did go wrong, Harry," Fred spoke up quietly. "You're yelling at the wrong Fred and James."

"How many Fred Weasleys and James Potters do you figure there are around here?" the red-haired man asked.

"I don't know, George, but somehow the guys you think you're talking to have been exchanged with, well, us. We're from the past, ask whoever the hell the wand guy in the hospital wing was."

"Wait, so…" George said suddenly, staring at the two teenagers. Fred nodded.

"Great," Harry muttered, running a hand through his rumpled hair. "Great. This _would_ happen, he _would_ wreak havoc on the entirety of the damn family on the brink of a war…"

"Harry, somehow I don't think Fred and Jay meant for _this_ to happen," George pointed out logically.

"Still… they had to have been fiddling with a time device – as if we haven't told them a _thousand_ times the dangers of meddling with time!"

There was a brief explosion outside Hogwarts grounds just then, and terrified screams drifting through the air. Casting a glance outside the window, both Harry and George paled.

Outside, in the evening sky, a smoky Dark Mark was illuminating the sky above Hogsmeade.

* * *

"Jamie, my boy, the tree must've squashed you good," Sirius Black declared as he sat back and looked at his best friend, who seemed disoriented and horribly confused. "Cracked your skull again, maybe?"

"Nah, it takes you to crack his skull, Seer," Remus Lupin commented, glancing nervously at the Dark Mark outside again.

"Wonder who did that?" Peter Pettigrew asked fearfully.

"Dunno, Peter, maybe a Death-Eater," Sirius said casually. "You think we can risk heading out again?"

"We should at least try," Remus said doubtfully. "I don't want to be around if and when the Death-Eaters come charging in. And besides, you guys have missed a whole day of classes."

"Yeah, all right," Sirius conceded, catching James by the arm. "Up you go then, Potter. Maybe we should take you to Madame Pomfrey. Peter, go ahead."

James shook his head, almost as though to clear the cobwebs from it, and muttered, "What the _hell_ is going on?"

Peter came back in a few moments later. "Guys, the passage is blocked. It's collapsed."

"You mean we're trapped in here?"

"Yeah, I guess."

* * *

"Listen to me very carefully, all of you," Harry said authoritatively as the Potter-Weasley family's children were all gathered in the headmistress' office. "You are all to stay right here. That includes you two," he added to James and Fred.

"Well, I'm not staying here," Teddy spoke up with certainty, leaning back against the wall with Victoire in his arm. His hair was now black with streaks of fire engine red, falling down into his eyes with a careless casualness that reminded James very strongly of Remus. "I'm going with you guys."

"Well, I know I can't make _you_ stay," Harry replied. "You're half Tonks and a quarter Black."

"Not to mention of age."

"That too. Al, Rose, you two are in charge," George ordered. The two fourth-years, both of whom had Gryffindor prefect badges, oddly enough, nodded.

"Hopefully we won't be too long," Ginny said with a worried glance at Harry.

"I'm going to find _our_ James, kill him, and then find the bastard who sent up the Dark Mark," Harry muttered, eyes snapping emerald fire.

"Harry, watch your mouth," Ginny said automatically.

"So where were you two when this all took place?" George asked the two teens.

"Well, _we_ were in that storage room testing Whizbangs…" Fred said.

"When the one dud exploded in your face?" George asked.

"Yeah, that's the last thing I remember before the courtyard," Fred replied.

"Katie, Ron, Hermione, Bill, Fleur," George said briskly as he started heading out the door. The named people followed.

"What about you?" Harry asked James.

James hesitated. "Passage," he said finally. We were in a passage."

"Oh, Merlin, _that's_ helpful," Harry growled. "_Which_ passage?"

"The one nobody's supposed to know about," James said evasively.

"The…" Harry swore continuously under his breath as he tried not to curse James. "Are you telling me that you were in the Whomping Willow passage last you remember?"

James nodded, getting the idea this was not a good thing.

"On a full moon?"

"Coming out of one," James replied quietly. "Peter didn't hold the knob long enough. The tree pile-drove me back into the passage."

"That's impossible," Teddy spoke up now. "Jay can't possibly be in the Whomping Willow passage."

"Why not?" 13-year-old Alyssa, George's middle child, asked timidly.

"Because I destroyed it sixth year, remember?" Teddy snapped. "The whole passageway's collapsed from the tree clear to the Shack."

"Teddy…" Victoire warned, putting a calming hand on his arm.

"Ginny, Teddy, Victoire, let's go."

* * *

"James," Sirius said again, as his best friend got to his feet shakily and headed out of the room momentarily. "Merlin, what is _with_ him now?" He and Remus, reluctantly followed by Peter, trailed their friend out into the hallway.

"Fred," James was saying into a weird black contraption. "Fred, you there?"

_"Yeah,"_ came a crackling voice in response. _"You on the radio?"_

"Yeah, at least these are still working."

_"Where are you, Jay?"_

"In an extremely weird position."

_"You got people thinking you're the other James Potter, too? I've got Dad at 17 here."_

"All right, we're both in the extremely weird position. Where are you? You still at Hogwarts?"

_"Yeah, we're just off Charms corridor in a closet. Door seems to be stuck and you know we can't blast it off."_

"I'm trapped in the Shrieking Shack."

_"Excellent. You can't get out, can you? The passage's been destroyed ever since Teddy's weird full moon thing and the house is impenetrable."_

"Nope. And there's a Dark Mark floating in the sky above Hogsmeade. If you're at all interested."

_"Dark Mark as in Death-Eater Dark Mark?"_

"You got it."

_"Did we do that?"_

"I don't know."

"_Jay, our dads are going to kill us."_

"Absolutely."

James went to put away the radio when another voice came echoing out. _"James Sirius Potter!"_

James blanched and pulled it back out. "Hey, Uncle George…"

_"You are going to be damn lucky to see your 17__th__ birthday, Jay, once your father's through with you."_

"Yessir." Jay figured it wasn't the best time to remind his uncle that he had already turned 17 three months ago.

_"Where the hell are you?"_

"In the Shrieking Shack."

_"Alone?"_

"No."

_"Damn it. All right, your parents, Granddad and Nan and Teddy and Victoire are on their way. They'll have to try and blast it clear. Stay put."_

"Yessir."

_"You're a dead man, Potter."_

"Yessir." James carefully put away his radio again and turned to look at the three teenagers staring at him. "I'm a dead man. You heard the guy. On the plus, we should be out soon."

"Who the hell are you?" Sirius asked.

"I would be…" James hesitated. "Jay Potter. James'… grandson."

"Grandson?" Remus repeated.

"Yeah. Well, my name's really James, but I don't get called that unless I'm being yelled at. Which is quite a lot, actually…"

"James and _who_?" Sirius asked curiously, cocking his head at the teen. "He ain't going out with anybody."

"James and Lily, coincidently my sister's name," Jay replied uncertainly.

"Lily?" Remus asked in surprise.

"_Evans_?" Sirius added incredulously.

"I guess. I don't know her maiden name."

"Merlin, hell really does freeze over," Sirius muttered.

"Hmm," Remus said in astonishment. "That's intriguing. When was your father born?"

"July 1980," Jay said. "Why, what year do you think it is?"

"That's two years from now," Remus mused.

"No, that's 41 years ago," Jay corrected.

"Hmm…" Sirius pondered the math for a moment. "So it's June 1978 now. July 1980 is… 25 months away. Take away nine for pregnancy…"

"So in the next 16 months, less than a year and a half," Remus calculated, "James managed to freeze hell, ask Lily out, get her to accept, marry her and impregnate her. Impressive."

"I dunno," Jay shrugged. "Not like I ever met the guy to ask. Dad didn't even meet the guy, not really." When Sirius, Remus and Peter all looked at him sharply, he explained, "Grandfather and Grandmother Potter have been dead for 40 years. Ever since my dad was a year old. Voldemort killed them." He sighed and pulled out his wand from his pocket, examining it morosely. "Damn it. I cracked it again." He looked up momentarily. "I tend to break my wand a lot. Aw, well, Teddy'll fix it once he gets here. Perk of having a godbrother who's a wandmaker."

There was a brief boom downstairs and a crash and splintering of wood.

"James!" came an angry roar.

"Up here, Dad!" Jay called. "Is Teddy with you?"

"I'm not fixing your damn wand right now, Jay!"

"But you _will_, right?" Jay called hopefully. "Eventually?"

"You and Teddy can negotiate once we're out of here," came the voice of a fairly young man who appeared at the head of the stairs. It was easy to see his parentage: James' appearance, but Lily's eyes. "Damn. I was hoping that hadn't happened." He delivered a swift blow upside Jay's head. "Haven't I warned you about fiddling with time devices?"

"This coming from the guy who went running around Hogwarts with a Time-Turner!" Jay yelped, rubbing the back of his head.

"_That_ was a matter of life and death, and it was a one-time thing. _And_, it was Aunt Hermione's Time-Turner." He turned around when the rest of the group caught up. The youngest man in the group, who didn't look any older than his early twenties with black hair and red chunks running through it, hair falling into his blue eyes with a badly-scarred face, stopped dead in his tracks upon sight of the Marauders. He crossed his arms on the railing, leaning forward.

"Well, this is interesting," he commented, though his stunned eyes were locked in a gaze with Remus, who seemed quite shocked at this boy who could almost pass for himself. "This is almost as interesting as the hospital wing with the doppelgangers."

"This is not interesting, Teddy. This is serious."

"Very serious," the young man agreed. "But interesting all the same."

"Merlin, you sound like your mother when you talk like that."

"I know. Grandmum points that out all the time."

* * *

"You like causing utter mayhem, don't you?" Al laughed as the adults all returned, hauling Jay and Fred with them, along with the teenage George and the other Marauders.

"Chaos, Al. It's uncontrolled chaos that we cause," Jay replied with a slight grin.

"I'm going to cause loss of life and limb if you two don't shut it and soon," Harry and George growled in unison.

"All of you, stay here," Harry ordered. "Al, Rose, you two are still in charge."

"But we're oldest!" Jay and Fred exclaimed indignantly.

"Yeah, but Al and Rose didn't blow up the damn courtyard and screw with time devices," Harry replied tersely.

"… prefects…" Jay muttered under his breath, glowering momentarily at his brother.

"But Jay and I are of age!" Fred protested.

"If you feel like being helpful, try undoing whatever you did," George snapped as the adults all left.

"What _did_ you do?" Alyssa asked as the rest of the underage cousins gathered together.

"Not entirely sure, to tell truth," Fred replied to his sister.

"Shall we reverse-engineer?" Jay asked, gazing gloomily at his cracked wand. "Or at least _you_ will."

The door opened just then, and Teddy strode back in. "Give me your wand," he said with a sigh. Jay grinned and passed it over.

"Thank you, Teddy," he said as Teddy repaired it quickly. "You're the best godbrother in the world."

"Your brown-nosing ceased to work when you were 11, Jay," Teddy said dryly, though the slightest hint of an affectionate smile teased at his lips as he passed back the wand. Then he left again, closing the door behind him.


	2. Teddy Tries To Fix It

**Chapter 2: Teddy Tries To Fix It**

"All right, so let's get started," Fred said, pulling up his robe sleeves and taking out his wand. "Where's the mirror?"

"Well, it blew up, Fred, remember?" Jay said, examining his own wand. "We don't have it. We'll have to try and recreate it."

"Don't do _that_," Al said immediately. "Probably end up with more people stuck in a time they don't belong in."

"Well, how are we supposed to fix it, then?"

"You shouldn't have built it in the first place!" Al exclaimed. "Dad told you not to screw with time devices!"

"Prefect."

"Idiot."

"The both of you, enough," Rose ordered. "Well, what were you _trying_ to do, guys?"

"We were trying to build a third-party past observer," Fred replied.

"A what?" Lily asked.

"Yeah, the name's still in progress," Jay admitted. "Basically, it was a mirror that showed the events of the past based on a date, a name or an event."

Al stared at his brother momentarily. "That would be damn useful to the Aurors."

"Exactly. We're sort of expanding on Uncle George's back-room paraphernalia," Jay replied.

"Did it _work_?" Hugo asked. "I mean, obviously it didn't quite work, because it exploded, but could you actually _see_ the people in the past?"

"Actually, it did," Jay said. "It was a bit astonishing. It worked for a bit."

"We managed to see bits of the past when we looked for names," Fred continued. "It worked really well for the events search – Dad will never be able to ream us out for brawls during Quidditch ever again, by the way," he added.

"Why, what'd he do?" Alyssa asked immediately.

"Only attacked Draco Malfoy."

"No, that was Dad. Uncle George and Uncle Fred got restrained," Jay corrected.

"Ah, yes, that brawl," the 'older' Fred and George both sighed in reminiscence. "The one that got us banned from Quidditch for a lifetime. Stupid Umbridge..."

"Banned from Quidditch?" Lily asked. "Brawls don't get you banned from Quidditch."

"Yeah, you would know," Jay muttered.

"They do when you try to attack Umbridge's pet student," George replied. "A lifetime ban. Chained up our brooms and everything."

"We saw the ferret episode too," Jay said.

"Yes!" Rose exclaimed. "Remake that mirror, I want to see that!"

"Why? It's not even Scorpius."

"It's his dad, it's close enough," Rose replied. "Maybe your book would help."

"Yeah, but our book is in the dormitory," Fred countered. "We don't have anything to get us down there undetected."

"Ah, maybe we do," Jay said, pulling out a parchment from his back pocket.

"The Map!" Fred exclaimed. "Yes, that's perfect! Open it up, Jay."

* * *

"The Map?" the 'older' Fred and George and the Marauders all said in unison.

"Not the Marauders' Map?" Fred and George asked.

"Nope. Marauders' Map, version 2," Jay replied, tapping it with his wand. "A little more secure, a little more accurate..."

"Not secure?" Sirius asked indignantly.

"Not accurate?" James echoed.

"In 1978, it was accurate. Not bad for 1978, I have to admit," Jay replied easily, spreading the parchment out on the floor. Where on the original map, the Marauders' greeting came, now it said,

_James Sirius Potter_

_Permission granted_

"Only lets family see it," Fred explained. "You gotta register your wand or it won't let you in. I liked the insults, though, on the other one. It was a nice touch."

"Insults?" Remus asked, frowning at James and Sirius. "That sounds suspiciously like something you two would've done."

"Well... we _did_ pour of our essence into that map," James conceded. "It might have insulted, say, Snivellus."

Jay, meanwhile, was saying to the map, "Show me Gryffindor Tower."

A blueprint of the tower appeared, point markers started moving around.

_Gryffindor Tower is occupied._

"Show me the sixth year boys' dormitory." The map zoomed into the dormitory.

_The dormitory is empty._

"Where's Dad?" James asked. The map began to zoom out again to the grounds and then dove in towards the Forbidden Forest.

_Harry James Potter is entering the Forest._

"Why the Forest? What's in there?" Fred muttered. He touched his wand to the map for a moment. "Where's Dad?"

The map froze up.

_Frederick Colin Weasley_

_Permission granted._

_I think I'm broken. I'm showing George Roderick Weasley in two places at once. One can't be in two places at once._

"You're not broken, we screwed up," Jay laughed. "One is with us. Where's the other one?"

The map started to work again, zooming into the Quidditch pitch.

_George Roderick Weasley is on the Quidditch pitch._

"All right, so we're good," Jay said. "Thanks, man." He tapped it twice.

_Not a problem._

"_That_ is so cool," George said.

"That's exactly what Dad said when we'd finished it."

"Course, _my_ dad whipped the hide off me when he found out I'd nicked the original from his desk for reverse-engineering," Jay muttered.

"Well, that thing's antique, Jay," Al pointed out. "You touch it too hard and it'll crumble."

"Go get your book, then," Rose said impatiently.

"Wait a second," Al spoke up, taking the map from his brother's hand.

_Albus Severus Potter_

_Permission granted._

"Where's Teddy and Victoire?"

_Victoire Elise Lupin is right outside the main door. Ted Remus Lupin is waiting outside the entrance to the hidden passage. Probably waiting for you to go do exactly what you were going to._

"Good thinking, Al," Fred said in surprise.

"I didn't get this badge because of my irrepressible charm and my dashing good looks," Al replied with a grin, throwing the prefect badge at his cousin, who ducked with a mock gasp of horror. "Although those didn't hurt."

Rose let out a 'ha!' of indignity. "This coming from the guy who manages to get no less than five girls cursing him at a time!"

"Hey, _that_ was not my fault!" Al exclaimed.

"Albus Potter, you are a bigger liar than your brother!"

"Hey!" Jay and Al both said with identical hurt expressions.

"Oy! Teddy!" Fred yelled. "We know you're there!"

"Looking for this?" the young man asked as he entered the room again, brandishing a large bound book with parchments sticking out everywhere. "Don't look so shocked," he laughed. "I taught you lot everything you know, remember?"

"Does Victoire know you're reverting to the old ways again?" Jay asked suspiciously, taking the book from his godbrother.

"Would I be here if she did?" Teddy asked with another laugh as he mussed Lily's hair teasingly and then joined Fred and Jay. "Managed to find another shard of glass for you."

"You found another one?" Jay asked in astonishment, grabbing the broken shard from Teddy. "Where?"

"Off sixth-floor corridor. Where the Room of Requirement used to be. Where'd you get yours?"

"Down the third-floor corridor," Fred replied, setting the glass down on the ground. "Find the notes, Jay."

"Don't have to order me around, just because you're a little older," Jay retorted. "That's not quite the same glass we had last time, Teddy."

"Course it's not, shut up," Teddy replied, flipping through the pages. "About how long ago did you two start this, any way?"

"Just before Quidditch season," Fred replied. "And then our slavedriver of a captain started working us six days a week."

"I am not losing that Cup to the Slytherins again," Jay said indignantly. "And we needed to break Lee in."

"Chucking a Bludger at my head is not 'breaking me in', Jay," Lily said dismissively, picking up the glass. "That looks different than the glass you had before," she said, examining it from different angles. "I could see other things in the first glass. My reflection wasn't quite the same in the first one."

"I know," Jay said with a frown, yanking the glass from his little sister's hand. "I don't know. I don't want to recreate it without having the same materials, Teddy, it's like trying to build a wand from pieces of another."

"It can be done," Teddy replied pointedly, twirling his wand around in his fingers.

"Yeah, but it takes a damn long time," Fred pointed out.

"I'm not doing it without the proper glass," Jay said definitively. "C'mon, Fred, we gotta find another shard down third-floor corridor." He grabbed the map and his wand, getting to his feet.

"I hear you, Jay," Fred agreed, getting to his feet as well.

"I'm not being held responsible if you get your heads blown off!" Teddy called after them.

James and Sirius both burst out laughing at that comment, as Remus shook his head.

"What's so funny?" Hugo asked.

"Oh, Remus must tell us that three times a day," Sirius replied dismissively.

"Yeah, well, trust us, it doesn't diminish any when you're older," the 'older' Fred and George both said.

* * *

"All right, let's see what the mad scientists came up with now," Teddy sighed, opening the book to the first page of notes on the mirror. "Hmm. I think I know what went wrong there," he commented, taking the shard he had brought in.

"Uh, Teddy, are you really sure you should be…" 11-year-old Sam started to say, when the door opened and Victoire came in.

"Ted Remus Lupin, you are incorrigible!" she fumed, pulling the shard out of his hand. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Cleaning up Jay's mess as usual," Teddy replied with a slight grin, taking the glass back from her. "Give it back, I want to see the looks on their faces when I beat them to the answer."

Victoire sighed in resignation as she smacked his head. "I thought I'd knocked the Marauder out of you." As she sat down with the rest of the group, she said, "You know Uncle Harry's going to kill you, right? Not to mention your grandmother, when she finds out what you've been doing?"

"Nah," Teddy said dismissively, beginning to redo the first few lines of notes on the glass. "They like me too much. I'm Teddy."

* * *

Lily watched her godbrother add his own notes to the book before he tried correcting Jay and Fred's problem. "Teddy, are you sure that's how you're supposed to do it?"

"Well, no, I'm not, Lee, it's not like this is a certified product," Teddy replied. He tapped the glass once more and looked at it. "I think I've fixed it."

"Let me see, Jay let me see the first time they made it work," Lily said immediately, pulling the glass towards herself just as it began to smoke. "Um, it's not supposed to –"

BOOM!

When the smoke finally cleared, they were looking at a much older Lily.

"What the hell?" she asked, her voice different, emerald eyes narrowing at the unfamiliar faces.

"Damn it," Teddy muttered.

"Oh, you are dead," Al said sympathetically.


	3. In Which A Deadline Is Established

A/N: I just discovered that my version of the Weasley grandchildren aren't quite canon. Apparently JKR released more information and I didn't catch it when I started writing this. (I get my information from the HP Lexicon.) I've canonized as much as possible – however, George's family is 'broken' beyond repair.

**

* * *

**

Chapter 3: In Which A Deadline Is Established

"Who are you?" Lily asked, frowning at the young man sitting across from her. He looked like Remus, a little.

"Oh, Merlin, this just gets better by the minute," came Sirius' snicker from nearby. "Hey, Evans."

"Hasn't been Evans in years, Sirius, you know that," Lily replied without even turning around.

"Speak for yourself, you don't have a stressed Auror for a godfather who's going to rip your head off when he finds out you've gone and disappeared his little princess!" the young man moaned, running his hand through his multicoloured hair. "He's going to _kill_ me…"

"Somebody want to explain?" Lily asked again, starting to panic internally. One minute she'd been pulling Harry from James' arms before their baby lost an eye or choked trying to grab at the end of James' lit wand and pull it into his mouth, the next she knew she was sitting here.

"Welcome to the year 2021, Lily," came Remus' voice. Lily turned around finally to see her husband and his friends, looking younger, behind her.

"What the hell?" she asked again.

"Apparently we've all been victims of an invention gone horribly wrong," James commented.

"So hell really does freeze over?" Sirius asked curiously. "I'm sorry, I have to know," he said in a wounded tone when Remus hit him on the arm.

"Yes, apparently it does," Lily sighed.

"Okay, where were you last you remember?" the young man across from her asked quickly.

"At home," Lily said uneasily.

"In Godric's Hollow?"

"Yeah…"

* * *

"All right, I'm going to go get our Lily and bring her back here," Teddy sighed, getting to his feet. "Nobody leaves for any reason. Nobody so much as _breathes_ on that damn book until I get back. Make sure you pass the message to Jay and Fred when they come back. Vic, you coming?"

"I'm going to curse you, I really am," Victoire said irritably as she got up as well. "If you weren't so damn cute and so damn charming, I'd kill you…"

"Well, don't curse me until after we've gotten Lily back…"

The two eldest left, and Rose sighed and got up, heading for the window. "I wonder who sent up the Mark?" she asked quietly, watching the ominous cloud above Hogsmeade. "I thought all the hardcore Death-Eaters were in Azkaban…"

"Malfoy. Bet you anything it was a Malfoy," Al said, joining her. "They're all gits, and they've been Dark since the day they were born." They watched for a while before he frowned, pointing in the direction of the Dark War Memorial. "Who's out there? It's after curfew…"

"They look a little familiar… Is there any way we can get a better look?" Rose asked.

"You're not even on duty and you're hall-monitoring!" Alyssa laughed, popping up alongside her cousins with Hugo. "Hey, who's that?"

* * *

"What just happened?" Remus asked as they both regained their balance after the crashing stopped. Standing up straight again, he helped his wife get to her feet. "How did you pass your Auror's test again?" he asked with a laugh.

"Sheer dumb luck," Tonks replied dryly.

"We didn't accidentally Apparate, did we?" Remus asked. Tonks shook her pink hair out of her face, in partial answer to his question as she looked at the white marble and gold plated plaque on the side of Dumbledore's tomb.

"Remus, look," she said softly. "I don't know what's happened, but I think we've traveled in time."

The plaque said:

_To the fallen soldiers of the Dark War (1970-1998) who gave their lives to protect what they held dear. May we never forget your sacrifice._

"Oh, Merlin…" Remus murmured, reading the countless names beneath it. Friends, acquaintances…

_Gideon and Fabian Prewett, 1979_

_Edgar, Diana, Emily and William Bones, 1979_

_Henry, Marlene and Evan McKinnon, 1980_

_James and Lily Potter, 1981_

_Sirius Black, 1996_

_Emmaline Vance, 1996_

_Amelia Bones, 1996_

_Professor Albus Dumbledore, 1997_

_Professor Charity Burbage, 1997_

_Auror Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody, 1997_

_Dobby Free-Elf, 1998_

_Theodore Tonks, 1998_

And beneath those names, a second plaque with roughly fifty names on them.

_To the fallen of the Battle of Hogwarts, May 2, 1998. The young live free today because of you._

Remus looked at the plaque for a while, silent in his thoughts, until he felt Tonks settle herself comfortably against his side, her head resting against his shoulder as she said softly, "So we die today." Reaching out, she pointed to the line about midway through the names: _Professor Remus and Auror Nymphadora Lupin._

"We die today," Remus confirmed grimly, his eyes searching each name. "And so does Fred Weasley." He pointed to the name at the end of the list. "Snape… Colin Creevey – Merlin, he's not even 17!"

"Where is everybody, you think?" Tonks asked, just as there came the indignant sounds of teenage boys trying to defend themselves.

"We haven't touched the damn thing since it exploded!"

"We don't have the right stuff to redo it!"

"Oh, like hell you haven't touched it!" came George's roar.

"We haven't, it's the truth, cross our hearts and kill us if we lie!"

"The thought has crossed my mind more than once in the last five hours, Fred!"

"We haven't done a thing, Dad, honest!"

"Explain the freak storm, James, then! Coincidentally, it happened the last time!"

"What the hell?…" Tonks asked, separating herself from Remus momentarily and the both of them drawing their wands warily.

An older-looking Harry and George both came out from the courtyard, hauling two boys who looked to be about 16 by their ears, angrily berating them about something. Ginny and Katie both followed close behind, Bill and Fleur not far after them.

The group stopped when they realized they were being watched, and both teenage boys' jaws dropped.

"We didn't do that!" they both chorused immediately.

"How do you know, geniuses?" George asked tersely, lowering his wand.

"Touché," the dark-haired boy muttered.

"Both of you, back to the office," Harry ordered. "Don't touch a damn thing until I get there."

"Yessir," they both mumbled.

"You _had_ to mess with it, you just _had_ to prove you were smarter!…" came a young woman's raging voice from the entrance to Hogwarts grounds as another young couple arrived. "I will never understand boys and this ridiculous need to posture!"

"Why don't I have a good feeling about this?" Ginny muttered under her breath as the couple joined them at the memorial.

"What did you do?" Harry groaned, rubbing his forehead wearily.

"He tried to fix it and made it worse," the young blonde woman said sarcastically.

"Aw, shut up, Victoire," the young man muttered. "Didn't mean for it to happen."

"I want explanations, and I want them now," Harry said dangerously.

"I, um, I –" the young man halted suddenly when he looked at Remus and Tonks. And it suddenly dawned on all three who they were looking at.

"Teddy!" Harry said sharply, and Teddy tore his eyes away.

"Right, sorry. I tried to fix Fred and Jay's… thing, and I think I messed it up worse –"

"Lily's gone missing," Victoire said, cutting him off. "We've got the _other _Lily up in the office, and we can't find _our_ Lily."

"You _lost_ Lily?!" both Harry and Ginny exclaimed.

"I told him not to mess with it!" Victoire continued.

"Both of you, back to the office, you shouldn't have left in the first place," Harry ordered tensely. "Who's watching the rest of them?"

"Al and Rose, I guess," Victoire replied uneasily.

"What's going on?" came another young woman's voice as she and an older teenage boy joined the group. "We just got back from Paris, and there's Dark Marks all over the skies, and houses are burning and…"

"Your cousins and your brother-in-law have an exquisite sense of timing," Bill said dryly. "Could you two go back to the Defence office with them and make sure Jay and Fred don't try to top Teddy?"

"Sure," the boy replied.

"What's going on?" Remus asked quietly as the four younger adults all took off, Victoire still railing at Teddy.

"You want the long version or the short version?" George asked.

"Any version, really," Tonks replied, frowning at her son's retreating figure. "This is _weird_."

"Oh, wait until you see what Jay and Fred did," Katie muttered. "It's going to get weirder yet."

* * *

There were disbelieving laughs from inside the office as the adults all entered.

"Where's Lee?" one dark-haired boy asked.

"We don't know," Victoire replied pointedly. "Teddy's lost her."

"Merlin, Teddy, not even we screwed up that much!" one red-haired boy laughed.

"Not funny, Frederick," George said warningly.

Another series of explosions sounded outside and Harry looked out the window with a dark frown.

"All right, I'm heading into the Ministry," he said quietly another Dark Mark flew up in the distance.

* * *

Jay and Fred both looked at each other uneasily. "Are we sure we didn't do that?" Fred muttered under his breath.

"Well, I'm not about to confess if we did," Jay muttered back.

"Do you think you might've not _lost_ her, but sent her... _back_?" Ginny asked Teddy worriedly.

"It's possible, I guess."

"Oh, damn it..." Ginny muttered. "What date was it last you know of?" she asked Lily, who still seemed very suspicious.

"October 30," Lily replied.

The hearts of everybody who knew what October 31 meant stopped dead.

"Of what year?" Teddy managed to ask.

"1981," Lily said uncertainly. "Why?"

Ginny sent Teddy a dark and warning glare. "Get to work. Fix it. Now."

"Why is this important?" Lily asked again.

The older Remus sighed and looked at her. "Because tomorrow you die."

* * *

"How the hell are we supposed to fix it?" Jay hissed at his godbrother.

"I don't know, but we'd better figure out something, or we will be going beyond the veil."

"You think?" Fred asked with a wry grin. "I've always wanted to know what was beyond that."

"I will gladly throw you right through if you don't get Lily back within the next 24 hours," George threatened. "Get to work."

"All right, what do we know? What did you do different than us that made it screw up like that?" Jay asked, conjuring a blank notepad as Fred opened up their book.

"Well, I rearranged a couple of charm sequences," Teddy said, writing down his formula.

"Yeah, but we knew we had to fix that, that _is_ the proper sequence," Fred said. "What else did you do different?"

"Nothing. Everything else was exactly the same."

"No, it wasn't," Al said, as he joined them. "You used different glass."

"Hell, what's different about glass?" Teddy exclaimed. "Just because it came from sixth-floor as opposed to third..."

"No, wait, Al might be on to something there," Rose interrupted, sitting down next to him. "Lily said the glass was different. She could see other things in Jay and Fred's."

"Yeah, her reflection was different. I remember, she told me," Alyssa said. "When they first started on it. She said it was like looking at herself in fifteen years."

Rose started thinking. "Hey, Dad?" she asked.

"Yeah?" Ron replied.

"Where was the weird mirror you and Uncle Harry found first year?"

"You mean, the Mirror of Erised?" Ron asked. "That was, uh... God, Rose, that was 30 years ago."

"Third-floor corridor, the one off-limits to students on pain of death," Hermione replied. "I remember every single time you two threw ourselves in danger in the name of – "

"Saving the world?" Ron asked with a grin.

"Well, it sounds more spectacular when you put it like that..."

"'I'm going to bed,'" Ron mimicked, grinning again as Hermione swatted his arm. "'before either of you come up with another clever idea to get us killed... or worse, expelled.'"

"I bet," Rose continued, "that Jay and Fred were using Erised glass. And yours came from where Room of Requirement used to be, didn't it?" she asked Teddy. He nodded slowly.

"So it would be coated in – "

"Fiend Fyre!" 19-year-old Dominique exclaimed. "Remember? They destroyed it with Fiend Fyre, so anything coming out of there would have its residue all over it!"

"So really, these all screwed up because we weren't using _normal_ glass," Fred said thoughtfully. "So to fix it..."

"Oh, you're _not_ building a third one!" Ginny exclaimed immediately.

"No, but we might be able to undo one of the first ones," Jay said, looking at Fred.

"But it's going to take a lot of firepower," Fred said.

"Another 'Great Scorpius Caper' situation?" Al asked innocently.

"Another what?" Teddy, Victoire and Nikki asked blankly, while 17-year-old Louis and the other older boys all grinned and the adults groaned.

"You haven't heard of the Great Scorpius Caper?" Rose asked with a slight smile.

"Dad's only been screaming about it for the last month. Malfoy too," Jay said. "It was all his idea," he added, pointing to Al. "He's an evil little prefect, he is."

"I noticed the 23-year truce died," Teddy commented.

"I know I'm going to regret asking this," Victoire sighed. "But what is the Great Scorpius Caper?"


	4. History of Twentieth Century Magic

**Chapter 4: History of Twentieth-Century Magic**

"Ah, the Great Scorpius Caper," Louis said fondly, grinning as his sisters sent him suspicious glances.

"First off, we have to get one thing straight," Al said. "Scorpius Malfoy is the biggest git this side of the veil. And I make that distinction only because there are bigger gits on the other side."

"Like who?" Teddy asked.

"Like Severus Snape."

"You're named for him, you know."

"Dad says just because he was a hero and a brave man, doesn't make him any less of a git."

"That being said," Fred continued. "It all started in November, when Scorpius decided to ask Rose on a date. Rose accepted. Why? We don't know. It is a mystery we will forever ponder."

"He wasn't a git then," Rose muttered.

"Any way," Jay carried on. "So all's lovey-dovey, and rather disturbing, quite frankly, because it's not every day you find a Slytherin and a Gryffindor snogging in hallways, for a few months. And then she catches him snogging Rebecca Goyle in the Slytherin corridor last month."

"Oh, I know what's coming," Nikki groaned. "If there's one thing this family has got in excess, it's a sense of family pride and duty."

"Well, what were we _supposed_ to do? He'd _humiliated_ her!" Al exclaimed. "Broke her heart, you know, she wouldn't come out of Myrtle's toilet for two days!"

"Okay, so one of you went and roughed him up," Teddy said, unimpressed. "So what? I did the same thing to Hayden Rosier when he went after Victoire."

"You and Hayden Rosier did that, like, once a week for no reason at all!" Victoire exclaimed.

"He's a slimy, Dark bastard, and he deserves to be kissed by a Dementor," Teddy said reasonably. "Have you forgotten what he did to me sixth year?"

"Actually, they more than roughed him up," Rose said with a slight roll of her eyes. "And it wasn't one on one."

"How many on each side?" Teddy groaned.

"Well, let's see..." Al said. "Me, Louis, Jay, Fred, Lorcan and Lysander Scamander, Michael Wood, Daniel Finnigan, Matt Thomas... I think we're missing somebody..."

"Hugo and Colin Creevey tried to come," Jay said. "We locked them up in the closet."

"And Ben was there too," Al finished.

"They swear they never laid a hand or a wand on him," Rose said dryly, "but seeing as the git is terrified of his own shadow now..."

"Oh, so the rest of the gang was in on it too, eh?" Ginny said disapprovingly. "Funny how that one never came up. I didn't think it was quite so bad when it was four of you. So there were _ten_ of you against one of him."

Teddy quickly muffled the snicker as Ginny and Victoire both sent him warning glares. "That'd be enough to make him wet his pants, I expect. Ten very angry fourth-, fifth-, sixth- and seventh-years cornering him in a dark, deserted corridor..."

"Scorpius Malfoy doesn't like the dark now," Fred said with a smirk. "Whimpers whenever any of us comes within a hundred feet of him."

"Won't go down the corridor to the North Tower without three or four seventh-years escorting him," Jay snickered.

"Cries his way through Herbology," Al added, grinning. "Course that might be because Lysander keeps sending threatening little sparks in his direction under the tables and Professor Longbottom keeps pretending not to notice."

"Keep working, or I'll show you fear," Ron threatened. The group quieted down for a few minutes, until Louis started making high-pitched whimpers.

"_'No, no, please... I'll apologize, I'll apologize, I'm sorry...'_" Then the snickers broke free again.

* * *

"_Boys_," Ginny muttered darkly, shaking her head. "Brothers weren't enough, I had to get boys?"

"What's wrong with boys?" Remus asked, leaning back against the wall – the teenage travellers had joined the others in the huddle, Fred and George now trying to compete with James and Sirius, who were trying to compete with Fred and Jay (who were, of course, winning because they knew all the old tricks).

"_You_ were probably smart enough not to go jumping from the roof," Ginny said. "And _your_ godfather probably wasn't on the ground egging you on."

"I _did_ jump off a roof once," Remus admitted. "Although, in my defence, I was 9, it was my brother on the ground egging me on and my mother beat him for a week when she found out."

Ginny laughed wryly, pointing her wand in Teddy's direction. "Five. No provocation whatsoever. I walk outside one day and he's jumping off the roof with Harry yelling directions from the ground."

"There were brooms underneath!" Teddy called back indignantly.

"_That_ one," she continued, her wand traveling to the back of Al's head with a roll of her eyes, "decided to try and knock Lily out of her high chair when he was three because he wanted to see how far she'd fly." The wand traveled back to Jay and Teddy. "What _haven't_ those two done is actually a better description. And that's just the boys. Lily's got a list of offences just as long."

"Which says something," Hermione added with a smile, "considering Teddy's got ten years on her."

"Yeah, it's really her that's the culprit or the reason behind most of the explosions at our house," Ginny sighed.

* * *

"This is so entirely weird," Sirius muttered under his breath to James as night began to fall and the huddle dispersed to different areas in the room.

Most of the group, being in school, had been sent back to their dormitories. Victoire had returned to London at about mid-afternoon for an exam of some kind and currently Teddy was trying to slink back to Diagon Alley.

"Mmm, no, I don't think so," Ginny said definitively, blocking the door. "Keep working."

"But Ollivander – "

" - will wait," Ginny cut him off.

"What d'you suppose happened to us?" Remus asked softly, looking over at his friends.

"Well, we know what happened to James and Evans," Sirius commented. "Dunno about Peter and I, but clearly _you_ lived long enough to marry, have a kid, grow old and get grey."

"Wait, what happened to James and Evans?" James asked immediately.

"Um, actually, I think got grey before I did any of that," Remus muttered.

"Why?" James asked curiously.

With the air of somebody who knows he's going to get the mickey taken out of him unmercifully, Remus sighed and yanked out a hair. Sirius and James both took one look at it and burst into uncontrollable laughter.

"Why do you do this to yourself, Remus?" Sirius managed to gasp out.

"You have just given us license to mock you for the rest of our lives," James howled.

"I figure you'll tire of it in a year," Remus sighed in resignation, though his face was flushed pink.

"Never," James said with a shake of his head.

"A whole new realm of humour has just opened its doors..." Sirius cackled.

"And the punchline always has to do with the grey teenage werewolf walking into a pub."

* * *

"Is it just me, or do you look lopsided?" Fred said curiously to his brother, as the twins eyed the older George. "There's something not right there. More than usual, I mean..."

"Yeah, I've only got one ear, if that's what you're discussing over there," the older George called tiredly.

"What happened to the other one? Cut yourself shaving?" Fred sniggered.

"Snape cursed it off, thinking I was Harry," the older George said grimly. "About a year from where you are. Near died."

"That's a slight exaggeration, George," Ginny said quietly, as the twins immediately shut up.

"I did," the older George said gravely. "Saw the light at the end of the tunnel and everything."

"George, that was my wand lighting up," Remus said frankly.

"Thought I was traveling that path rather quickly," the older George replied gaily, waving him off.

* * *

Tonks, meanwhile, had cautiously advanced to watch her grown son – not even two years younger than she was right now – working with great intensity.

That look of utter concentration... the one that said that the world could blow up around him and he wouldn't even blink... it was so particularly Remus. The way the fear and the uncertainty flickered across that scarred face... so Remus – and Merlin, did she know that look: the look he used to get all the time at the very beginning of their marriage, the look he still got when he was holding Teddy. Even the way his hair kept falling into his eyes, obstructing his view and making him push back the tendrils of hair irritably every few minutes... very Remus.

His wand was particularly interesting, she thought as she watched him glide the wand across the glass, frowning and cursing under his breath when nothing seemed to happen. She'd never seen a wand like that before... if she'd had to hazard a guess as to its components...

"Birch and maple," Teddy said quietly, not even looking up. "Dualized phoenix-feather core. Thirteen inches, rigid." Pausing momentarily, he looked at her. God, those eyes were so Remus as well... "It's the first thing people ask when they see it. 'What the hell kind of wand is that?' Ollivander made me build it as an internship project after Hayden Rosier snapped my old one in half."

"Yeah, why _did_ Rosier snap your wand again?" Nikki asked, hopping up onto the table next to his workspace.

"It was grad, and he was drunk," Teddy said with a shrug.

"Was he the one that got carted off to MLE for the night to dry out?"

"One of them," Teddy replied. "And they got carted off to MLE for more than just to dry out." There was a dark tone in his voice that clearly said he didn't want to discuss it.

"Oh, yeah, that's right, I think Victoire told us about that," Nikki said, dropping the subject. Teddy returned his full attention to the task at hand, trying another nonverbal spell on the glass and his eyes lighting up briefly as the glass glowed a bright blue. "Oh, I think you might be onto something there."

"I'd save your applause for when it actually accomplishes something," came Victoire's voice as she entered the room, closely followed by another young man of around the same age, a distinctly unkempt look about him, with his shaggy brown hair and mildly worn clothes. His own face had the telltale scars of a werewolf, though not to the severity of those on Teddy's face. "Talented though he is in the areas of big bangs and flashy things, this is slightly different."

"Hi, Marcus, what are you doing here?" Nikki greeted, looking up from her spot. "Thought you were on duty at the office."

"Not at the moment, Harry sent me home," Marcus laughed, Teddy greeting him with a brief nod.

"So you came to see how badly I screwed up, did you?" Teddy asked, returning his attention to the glass.

"Well, you always screw up so spectacularly," Marcus returned teasingly. He looked at Tonks and said, "Oh, sorry. Marcus Dylan, left-hand angel." He held out his hand briefly.

"I'm sorry?" Tonks asked with a slight frown as she took the hand.

Teddy put down the glass. "Y'know that whole Muggle concept of the angel and devil on the shoulders? Apparently I've got enough of the devil in me that I need an angel on each shoulder. Right-hand angel," he gestured to Victoire, "the one screaming that I shouldn't be doing it. Left-hand angel," he gestured to Marcus, "the one screaming about how much trouble we're going to get into."

Despite herself, Tonks bit back a appreciative snicker.

"You, work, now," Ginny called again.

"Yeah, yeah, working," Teddy called back, just as Marcus was saying to Tonks,

"So who are you? Kudos on the hair, by the way, I thought Teddy was the only person who could pull off weird-coloured hair."

Tonks looked back at the adults momentarily, but before anybody could offer an explanation, Teddy said, "Marcus, meet my mother."

Marcus looked back and forth for a moment, before he looked back at Tonks and said frankly, "Little young, aren't you?"

"Excuse me, I'm still older than you!" Tonks exclaimed indignantly, as there came a muffled snort from the older Remus behind her. "And that's quite enough out of you!" she added pointedly.

"Boy, when you screw up, you really screw up spectacularly, don't you?" Marcus commented easily to Teddy, brushing his hair out of his face. "What's all this?" he asked, looking around the room. "That's, what, one – two – three – four – five – six – seven – eight – nine?"

"I'm only responsible for two," Teddy said defensively.

"Three," Victoire corrected quietly. "You have eighteen hours. Shut up and work."

"So who's the other culprit?" Marcus asked.

"The mad scientists," Nikki replied. "They've been banished to their dormitory."

* * *

It was just about sunset when the older adults finally relented for the night, though the young adults remained in the office working on a solution with the displaced people.

"You don't have to stay, you know," Teddy said to Victoire and Nikki. "You can go home and do whatever it is girls do when we aren't around."

"Not until you give up the keys, I can't," Victoire replied. "And I need you to drive the stupid bike home, because I can't steer that thing."

"Apparate, I'll drive it back later. Can't you just 'Alohomora' the door?" Teddy asked tersely.

"Not with that busybody across the hall watching from her peephole, I can't."

"So Confund her. What happened to your keys, any way?"

"I left them at home. I thought you were supposed to be back by the time I left for class."

"Well, I'm sorry for Lily being such a nosy little prick..."

"Don't blame Lily, she's not here to defend herself and it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't been screwing around with that stupid thing in the first place..."

* * *

"Do they always bicker like this?" the older Remus muttered to Marcus and Nikki.

"Since the day she was born, according to Dad," Nikki laughed. "Bit of a Weasley legend, they are. He tries to knock her out of her crib, so she bites him, then he knocks her down the stairs, so she shoves him out of the tree..."

"I'm told it only took me twelve hours after her birth to master the phrase 'No Vic'," Teddy added, tossing a set of keys at Victoire. "There. I'll see you later."

"Well, Dad told me not to take it from you," Victoire said with a slight smile, landing a light kiss on his cheek. "See you later." With that, she turned and headed for the door. "Nikki, you coming?"

"Nah, not yet," Nikki replied.

"So what exactly is going on around here?" Sirius asked casually as the Marauders joined the rest of the group again.

"Yes, what exactly happened to James and Evans?" James asked.

"Oh, Merlin, are you still in the Evans era?" Lily asked in surprise, looking at him.

"Hey, last thing you said to him was that if he so much as looked at you again, you were going to curse him into oblivion," Sirius said with a laugh.

"Yeah, well, clearly kismet had other ideas," Lily said dryly. "Still not entirely sure how it happened."

"Felix Felicis," the older Remus spoke up.

"Felix Felicis?" Lily asked. "Are you being quite serious?"

"Oh, blimey, I'd forgotten about that stuff!" James exclaimed.

"Yeah, where is that bottle, any way?" Sirius asked.

"Think it's under my Quidditch junk," James replied. "It's mine, though, you can't have any. So that's the trick, eh?"

"Think you need the entire cauldron, there, mate," the teenage Remus laughed.

The conversation was interrupted by Tonks suddenly stifling a huge yawn. Her head had been dropping ever-so-slowly to Remus' shoulder for the last few minutes, the first signs of fatigue beginning to show. "Sorry, just can't keep my eyes open," she yawned, her eyes closing as her head finally landed on his shoulder.

"Yeah, go ahead, I know you've been up three nights straight," Remus replied with a slight smile. "Lee and the twins invading the house for the broadcast last night probably didn't help either."

"That was the best damn _Potterwatch_ ever," Tonks mumbled sleepily. "Can't believe they broke into Gringotts and got away with it..."

"Oh, so _that's _where you're at, is it?" Nikki asked interestedly. "Wow, Gringotts. That's an age and a half ago..."

"What?" everybody asked blankly, including Marcus.

"What the hell is Gringotts?" Marcus asked.

"Gringotts is the bank, genius," George said in a semi-disdainful tone.

"What kind of wizard are _you_, don't know what Gringotts is?" Fred asked.

"Don't get all Malfoy on him, Gringotts doesn't exist anymore," Nikki said sternly. "Poor boy got raised by Muggles, you can't blame him for not knowing the little things. Mind, Marcus, if you'd paid attention in History of Magic, you'd know it."

"Who pays attention in History of Magic?" Marcus replied. "I roomed with half the textbook, any way, what was the point in it?"

"I'm not half the textbook!" Teddy exclaimed. "Might be a paragraph. Sentence or two."

"Your _family_ is half the damn textbook!"

"Yeah, true enough, they do mention the names Potter and Weasley a lot, don't they?"

"Wait, what happened to Gringotts?" Fred and George both asked, just as James demanded,

"What the hell happened to James and Evans?"

"You got killed, that answer your question?" Sirius shot back at him. "I want to know what happened to Gringotts."

"It fell," Nikki said simply. "Goblins revolted, gold went poof and the economy crashed."

"About a week after the Battle of Hogwarts," Teddy spoke up. "Took them a good few years to get the world back on their feet."

"Economy crashed, you say?" the teenage Remus asked interestedly.

"Yep," Teddy replied. "Not a piece of gold, silver or bronze left unless you were rich enough to have it in another country. So pretty much 1 percent of the population." He paused for a second. "Yeah, hard times for a while."

"You can't possibly remember, you were practically newborn!" Nikki exclaimed.

"I remember the last bit of it!"

"I remember a bit," Marcus said thoughtfully, his hand going automatically to rub his shoulder. "A little bit, any way, from before Greyback."

"Oh, Merlin, Greyback's still around?" the older Remus groaned in unison with the younger.

"I don't think so, not anymore. Uncle Harry reckoned he'd got him years back, right?" Nikki asked Teddy.

"Harry figures he found some slimy little hole to crawl into and convalesce," Teddy replied.

"Thirteen years is a bit long to convalesce," Nikki pointed out.

"Why not?" Teddy asked. "Voldemort convalesced for thirteen years."

"Oh, don't even put that thought in my mind," Nikki shuddered.

The door opened just then and another young man about Teddy's age came in, with the young teenage Lily behind him. "Hey, look what I found lurking around Spinner's End."

"Hey, Kryton," Marcus and Teddy both said, unabashed relief in Teddy's voice.

"Lee, get back to Gryffindor Tower. It's way past curfew for the second years," Teddy said. "Not that I'm not hugely chuffed to see you in one piece."

"No way, I'm staying, that was so cool!" Lily exclaimed, dropping down to the ground next to her cousin as Teddy abandoned his work for the moment. "It was like, poof, and it was like, poof, and then I land in the middle of this drunk old lady's sitting room, and it was quite spectacular. She started throwing things at me, kept calling me a figment of her demented mind and the ghouls won't be getting her that easily."

"Could hear old Mrs McLaughlin screaming from down the street," Kryton said with a roll of his eyes. "Took me a while to catch on, woman screams like that a lot." He paused for a moment. "Well, I got to get going. Can't keep away from Claire for much longer, she might near kill me this time."

"Bye, Kryton, thanks for giving me a lift," Lily said cheerfully.

"Wait, so what's all going on now?" Peter asked.

"Here, diagrams help with this lot," Marcus said dryly, conjuring a small easel and a large presentation board.

"History of Twentieth-Century Magic, with particular emphasis on the First and Second Dark Wars and the Rebuilding," Teddy said, tapping the board. "General timeline. Where should we start?"

"Start with us and work your way up," James advised. "Start with what the hell happened between James and Evans."

"Who do I look like, Trelawney?" Teddy asked indignantly. "I don't know, that was, like, half a century before my time!"

"I'm not that old, thanks!" the older Remus exclaimed.

"From this point in time, not yours," Teddy pointed out. "_Harry's_ close to half a century, and they're before Harry."

"All right, so we leave Hogwarts and then what?" James asked impatiently. "Would somebody who knows please start the timeline?"

"October 31, 1981," Teddy said briskly.

"That's tomorrow," the older Lily murmured.

"Lee?" Teddy prompted.

"Who _doesn't_ know what October 31 of '81 is?" the younger Lily said scornfully.

"You want me to get the prefect brother?" Teddy threatened. "Al's been looking for an excuse to stick you in detention."

"You wouldn't!" she gasped, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Watch me. October 31, 1981."

"End of the First Dark War, triumph of the Boy Who Lived over the Dark Lord, blah, blah, Harry Potter rules, blah," Lily sighed dramatically.

"Something that would earn more than a 'T' on a paper, please."

"What am I, your parrot?" Lily demanded.

"I can fetch him in under two minutes."

"End of the First Dark War, brought on by the apparent triumph of 15-month-old Harry Potter against the Dark wizard Lord Voldemort in Godric's Hollow. Harry's parents James and Lily are killed previous to this glorious event. Death-Eaters continue to wreak havoc on the world, however, well into the next month. Harry is sent to live at number 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging in Surrey, the home of his only living relatives, Vernon and Petunia Dursley."

"Petunia?" the older Lily exclaimed suddenly. "What happened to Sirius?"

"Ah, the saga of Sirius Black is an entire unit all its own," the younger laughed.

"Suffice to say he was in no position to take him," Teddy continued. "Any way, Harry becomes an overnight celebrity and 1981 to 1993 is a window of relative peace. June of 1992, there's a brief, mysterious skirmish at Hogwarts that ends up with a dead professor, a wounded yet heroic first-year Gryffindor by name of Harry Potter and the legendary Philosopher's Stone destroyed."

"But seeing as the professor had Voldemort poking out the back of his head, there's not much sympathy in the market for him," the younger Lily cut in.

"June of 1993, Voldemort makes another brief appearance as a section of soul in a diary," Nikki continued. "This time, he's got first-year Ginny Weasley under his control, until the brave and heroic second-year Harry Potter slays the monster of Slytherin in the Chamber of Secrets and saves Hogwarts from imminent closure."

"Bit of a hero's complex, that one, yeah?" James asked.

"Mum calls it his martyr complex," the younger Lily corrected. "Continuing on, though, August of 1993 - "

"I think that year's fine, Lee, enough of them know what happened," Teddy interrupted. "Skip straight to Triwizard."

"Yes, Professor Lupin," the younger Lily said reprimandingly.

"I don't think Al's gone to bed yet."

"1994 to 1995 is the first Triwizard tournament in about fifty years," she sighed. "Three schools compete, but there are four champions."

"Durmstrang's champion is Viktor Krum, an international Quidditch star with the Bulgarian national team," Nikki reeled off. "Beauxbatons' champion is Fleur Delacour, mother of yours truly, and Hogwarts' initial champion is Hufflepuff Cedric Diggory. But then the Goblet of Fire spits out another name. Can anybody guess what name?"

"We can," Fred and George both muttered.

"Think I still got stubble from that beard," Fred complained.

"Pretty sure I found a white hair yesterday."

"People who were there don't count," Nikki replied.

"Based on how this story's been going, I'm going to go out on a limb and say 'Harry Potter'," Sirius said.

"And you would be correct, sir," the younger Lily said cheerfully. "Who are you, any way?"

"I would be the mysterious Sirius Black that nobody wants to talk about."

"Oh, so _you're_ Sirius. Finally, a face to the name."

"Lee, Triwizard or Al. Your choice."

"A wide array of gruelling tasks and mad Defence professors, who really was an escaped Azkaban prisoner and Death-Eater posing as an Auror, along with the usual sadistic Potions professor, are presented that year. Triwizard ends with the death of Cedric Diggory by the servant of Lord Voldemort, who then resurrects him from his state of half-life."

"Actually, I'm not entirely sure Mad-Eye wouldn't have acted exactly the same way," Tonks yawned, eyes cracking open slightly.

"Any way, the Second Dark War is defined as the period of three years following the resurrection of Voldemort, from 1995 to 1998..."


	5. The Next Generation

**Chapter 5: The Next Generation**

"You really do have to go back to your dormitory, Lily," Nikki said apologetically. "Don't you have an exam tomorrow morning?"

"Well, yeah, but it's just Potions," Lily shrugged. "And it's not until, like, 10."

"I got an O on my Potions NEWT," Teddy mentioned casually as he leaned back in his chair momentarily.

"Barely," Lily shot back. "I'll still have you beat without even trying."

"Even so, considering how chummy Slughorn and I were..."

"Ah, made it into the Slug Club, did you?" Sirius said knowingly.

Teddy and Marcus both burst into laughter. "Hell, no!" Marcus exclaimed.

"Hated me from day one, he did," Teddy said, once he'd calmed himself down enough to speak.

"That's because you broke his brass cauldron before class had even started, Teddy," Marcus pointed out.

"Not the one from Andremischa Hendryvitch, I hope," the older Lily spoke up. "I think that must be his most prized possession. Tells the story of how he got it about fifty times a year."

"That's the one," Teddy laughed. "Well, actually, Hayden Rosier was the one who broke it, but apparently I get blamed because I dodged his curse."

"Doesn't he still glare and mutter darkly under his breath every time he passes Ollivander's?" Nikki asked. Teddy nodded.

"I think I might actually be top of his black list," he grinned. "Should've seen the look on his face when he realized I was going for a Potions NEWT. I think he might've secretly hoped Rosier had finished me off with that potion."

"I do think those three days you were in St Mungo's were the happiest days of his life," Marcus laughed.

"Yeah, why _didn't_ Rosier get expelled again?" the younger Lily asked.

"Because nobody could prove anything," Marcus said dryly. "Stuff had evaporated into thin air in seconds. By the time anybody realized what was happening, it was gone."

"Don't think even Yaxley would be thick enough to try it again, though," Teddy laughed. "Not with his and Rosier's names on the watch list at the Aurors' Office."

"I don't know, Yaxley's pretty stupid," Nikki muttered.

"That's why I'm more concerned about Rosier. He's at least got a brain," Teddy said with a grin.

"Did that many Death-Eaters escape convictions?" Tonks asked with a frown. "They're probably not the ones we know, right?" Lily and Remus, along with the teens, all nodded in agreement with the question.

Teddy rolled his eyes. "You'd be amazed how many Death-Eater babies came out of the woodworks in the first few years. Some of them were born underground while their parents were in hiding from the Aurors, others out of country and their mothers brought them back when the Aurors finally caught up with their husbands."

"Yeah, there's a few of them around," the younger Lily said. "The ones more around my age, their parents couldn't be totally convicted, so they did their prison time and then got out within a few years."

"That was the Goyle-Ashlingvilla group, right?" Nikki asked. "The ones who went to school with the DA?"

"Yeah," Teddy nodded. "The direct Death-Eater kids are more around our age. Rosier, Yaxley, Avery, Wilkes, Burke, Nott, Selwynn..."

"Well, the Lestranges are our age," the younger Lily pointed out.

"There are exceptions," Teddy agreed. "Speaking of Lestranges, don't you have to be back in your dormitory, sleeping, so you can show them both up in Potions tomorrow?"

"Since when did you become a professor?" Lily asked disdainfully. "And you shouldn't talk, considering how many times _you_ got caught out of bed."

"Lily, go back to Gryffindor Tower," came Neville's tired voice as he entered the room. "The last thing we need right now are students out of bed. Take the Defence corridor, cut through the passage behind the monks' portrait and go straight to the tower. Your brother's waiting to let you in – the password's changed."

"Which brother?" Lily asked suspiciously.

"The one with the shiny prefect's badge, obviously," Neville replied with a slight smile. The younger Lily groaned. "Go on, Lily, now."

"Have you finished the marks on the exams yet?" Lily asked hopefully. Neville laughed and threw her out.

"She's a piece of work, that one," he said with a shake of his head. "Aren't you supposed to be here tomorrow morning, not tonight, Teddy?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'll probably go back to the shop to get my stuff, but we have a bit of a problem to sort through, as you can see," Teddy replied. "Did Harry fill you in?"

"No, but Rose took great delight in informing me that Jay and Fred have 'screwed up royally again'," Neville laughed. "And apparently you have a hand in it as well?"

"Yeah, I'm partly to blame," Teddy admitted sheepishly. "What's going on, Neville? It's quicker for Lily to cut through the courtyard."

"Have you not noticed the Dark Marks in the sky?" Neville asked. "Professor McGonagall's put the school on lockdown on Harry's orders."

"And he hasn't called you in yet, Professor?" Marcus asked.

"Not quite yet, although at this rate, I imagine I'll be an Auror again within the next 24 hours. I suggest, however, that _you_ get yourself down to the office if you fancy still having a job when the sun rises."

"I got my pager, I'll get the message when he needs me," Marcus sighed. "Sadly enough, I'm not much help until somebody's bleeding."

"Okay, what's exactly going on here?" the teenage Remus asked.

"That's what we'd like to know, too," Teddy said wryly. "As far as we seem to be able to figure out, what few semi-free Death-Eaters there are left are on the rampage today."

"I'd say Harry's gone to chuck Draco Malfoy into Azkaban," Neville added. "Considering he was warned that the first hint of Death-Eater activity, there would be a nice, cozy, high-security cell with his name written all over it." He paused for a moment, then added, "Oh, Teddy, just to warn you, Umbridge is here tomorrow doing her thing."

Contrary to what the older Remus and Tonks thought would be the reaction, Teddy cracked a smile. "Excellent. Is it a surprise?"

"Of course, so naturally, everybody knows," Neville laughed. "When's the show? She knows Ollivander's sending you out just after lunch."

"I'd say if you were to wander into the courtyard at about, oh, say, 3 PM, you might see something worth watching," Teddy replied mysteriously.

"Just don't – "

"Honestly, Neville, I _was_ listening on the train in first year," Teddy interrupted. "I won't provoke her." Under his breath, he muttered, "Not directly at least."

* * *

"Did _you_ get anything out of that conversation, George?" Fred asked in exasperation once the present-time people had left.

"Neville's a professor, which is absolutely astounding," George replied promptly.

"Malfoy somehow wriggled his way out of Azkaban, I'm thinking thanks to Harry's bleeding heart," George continued.

"Somehow, Umbridge is still alive and kicking around," Fred said.

"And apparently our insanity gene has passed on to the next generation."

* * *

The next morning, the courtyard had filled with students after breakfast. From the magically magnified window of the office, the twins had a great view of the academic antics.

Fred and Jay, along with a friend who suspiciously resembled Lee Jordan, all had textbooks lying open in their tight little knot, while Louis was aimlessly tossing a bottle of Butterbeer from hand to hand. In the centre of the circle, they had laid a small, thin rectangular object. This object (probably no bigger than a matchbook) was currently blaring (obviously blaring, since they could still hear strains of it all the way up in the headmistress' office) something they thought could be loosely described as 'music'. A few other groups of students also had similar objects.

Al seemed to be completely ignorant of the prefect badge currently affixed to his chest, laughing as he flicked little sparks at a set of wiry blond twins, Rose and another blond boy glowering at them imperiously. Rose jabbed a finger at the textbook (History, judging by the size of it) and exclaimed something with one phrase clearly distinguishable: "You are a prefect…"

"Clearly Hermione's kid," Fred laughed as Al rolled his eyes, plucked off the badge and tossed it at her with a grin.

"Clearly," George agreed. "Wonder who those lot are, though. The blond ones?"

"Dunno, the bigger one looks familiar, though," Fred commented.

"Ah, discovered the Window of Knowledge, have you?" came Neville's laugh from behind them. "There's a reason Dumbledore knew everything. You hear conversations crystal-clear with this," he added cheerfully, passing them a long, thin rod. "Audio Magnet. Stick it in the windowsill."

"Hey, who're all the students down there now with our lot?" George asked curiously. "The one guy there, he looks like Lee."

"Lee's son Todd," Neville replied. "Sixth-year, same as Jay and Fred. Lacks his father's charisma, but not a bad kid."

"And the blondes over there with the spawn of Weasley-Granger?" Fred asked.

"Which one, Rose or Hugo?" Neville asked, greeting Remus, Tonks and Lily with a brief wave and a smile.

"The girl."

"Oh, the bigger one's Ben Dursley – "

"Dursley?!" came the shocked exclamations.

"Dursley, you _are_ kidding, right?" Lily laughed.

"Nope. With a Bones for a mother and a Potter for a cousin, would you ever doubt the magic running through _those_ kids?" Neville rolled his eyes. "The whole thing's a bit ironic, according to Harry. The twins are Luna's. Lorcan and Lysander Scamander." He scanned the crowds. "Oh, there's Scorpius hiding in the shadows there, he'd better hope none of that lot spots him watching Rose…"

And indeed the young Malfoy was hovering in the shadows across the courtyard from where Al and Rose were sitting with their friends, seeming to watch them with an almost hungry look in his eyes. He chewed at his bottom lip nervously, hands clutching his History textbook compulsively. He fixed his gaze very firmly on the text whenever one of the Potter or Weasley boys would cast a suspicious glance in his direction, and looked up only for brief, fleeting moments.

"I'm telling you, this is the best part of teaching," Neville laughed, leaning in to catch a better glance. "It's like watching a particularly long epic unfold."

"Yeah, what _do_ you teach any way?" George asked.

"Herbology," Neville replied, still scanning the crowds of students. "The only subject I ever was any good to teach. Wouldn't want any other post, to tell the truth. Oh, yeah, Fred and Jay have their iPod out. You watch, in about two minutes, Christiana – the Defence professor – is going to come storming out and – "

"Off!" came a woman's roar. "Off, I tell you, I won't have that racket on in exam period!"

"Damn, hide it, quick!" Fred hissed and there was a scramble to retrieve the iPod, textbooks went flying and Jay had just managed to dive in and grab the little player, the music shutting off abruptly, when a woman likely in her mid-40s came storming up to them.

"Good morning, Professor Rumer," all four boys chorused innocently.

"If you _must_ have music, put up a Shield Charm at least," she said irritably before stalking off again.

* * *

"Where are we going? Oughtn't we have told somebody we'd left?" Peter asked desperately, scrambling to keep up with his more athletic cohorts under the Invisibility Cloak.

"Peter, are you or are you not of age?" Sirius asked in exasperation. "We don't need Mama's permission to leave. Not that my mother would actually care if I left – oh, wait, I _did_ leave. She was the one setting my names in flames on the tapestry."

"What's that up there?" Remus asked, pointing towards the white marble construction directly ahead of them.

"Looks like a tomb or something," Sirius commented. Once the four had reached it, they all circled the structure curiously.

"Oh, there we are," James said, pointing to the plaque on the door. "Let's see… _Headmaster Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore died June 13, 1997 while defending the students and the school he had devoted his life to from attacking Death-Eaters._"

"Huh," Sirius said in mild surprise. "So Dumbledore _is_ mortal after all. I was starting to wonder."

"Suppose he had to die sometime, might as well have been while sticking it to Voldemort," James agreed, circling around the other side. "Take a look at this one, guys. _Headmaster Severus_ – "

"Wait, _Snivellus_ was _headmaster_?!" Sirius exclaimed.

"Guess so," James shrugged before continuing. "_Headmaster Severus Adrian Snape was killed just a few kilometres from here on May 2, 1998 by the Dark wizard Voldemort in the Battle of Hogwarts._"

"Merlin, the world's gone to the dogs," Sirius muttered. "Snivellus _headmaster_…" He ambled around to the back of the tomb. "Hey, look, it's a list of the dead!"

The other three boys joined him as he started reading out names.

"Gideon and Fabian Prewett… Edgar and Diana Bones, must be their kids there, that Emily and William…Henry and Marlene McKinnon, and probably kids again…" He paused. "James and Lily Potter, 1981."

"1981?" James asked uneasily. "That's only, like, 3 years away."

"Weren't you two listening at all when that other lot were explaining things to us?" Remus asked.

"Well, the general overview, I wasn't really paying attention to the tiny little details like that," James said dismissively. "Then there's this huge long 15-year break," he continued as he returned his attention to the plaque, "and then – "

"Sirius Black, 1996," Sirius finished. "I wonder, do we get more information if we touch the name?"

"I don't think so, I think this is just a monument to the people who died fighting in the war," Remus replied. "Look, Moody's on here, Ted Tonks, right near the end of the war… that's the end of it."

"Well, bully for you and Peter, then, you got out of it," James grumbled.

"I don't think we did, James, look beneath it," Remus said, pointing to the plaque below the first. "To the fallen of the Battle of Hogwarts, May 2, 1998… Blimey, this is all just the dead from one battle!"

"There's almost more there than there is in decades on that plaque!" Sirius exclaimed.

"Let's see… Professor Firenze… isn't that one of the centaurs in the Forest?... Professor Filius Flitwick…" Remus stopped. "Yeah, see, there." He pointed to one line. "Professor Remus Lupin."

"Professor, eh?" James said with a grin. "Mr. There's-No-Point-In-NEWTs-Since-I'm-A-Bleeding-Werewolf…"

"Shut up," Remus muttered with a slight flush of embarrassment. "I didn't say there was no point in them, I said they weren't going to be much help."

"Auror Nymphadora Lupin…" Sirius said thoughtfully. "Why does that name sound familiar?"

"Probably because it's the same last name as our dear Professor Moony here," James cracked.

"No, the first name, it sounds familiar…" Sirius insisted.

"Isn't that what your cousin named her daughter?" Peter spoke up.

Sirius thought for a moment. "Yeah, Andromeda! She named her kid Nymphadora." He whirled back around on Remus and said in a teasing voice, "Cradle-robber, the kid's, like, four."

"I'm pretty sure you would've beaten the hell out of me when it happened, Sirius," Remus replied with a slight smile.

"Nah, Sirius wasn't beating the hell out of anybody when it happened," came the mildly amused voice of Teddy behind them. "Seeing as he'd been dead for over a year."

The four young men whirled around. Teddy was sitting on a motorbike which looked eerily familiar, a hard-cased kit slung over his shoulder and dressed in a pair of torn jeans, a band shirt of some kind and a studded leather jacket. His hair was still black and red, though looking decidedly more unkempt than it had yesterday.

"Snuck out, I take it?" he asked with a laugh. "Don't blame you, place is probably completely different from when you were here."

"Hey, that's mine!" Sirius exclaimed suddenly, still examining the bike.

"What?" Remus asked in exasperation.

"That's my bike," Sirius repeated. "That's the bike I bought off that chap in London on Easter break."

"Sort of looks like it, doesn't it?" James said thoughtfully as he was folding up the Cloak.

"Yeah, that's your bike," Teddy admitted, leaning forward on the handlebars. "Restored to its former glory after near twenty years sitting in Granddad's garage. Harry said _somebody_ might as well get use out of it, wasn't doing much good sitting at the Burrow."

"So what are you doing here, anyway?" James asked him curiously.

"Work," Teddy replied cheerfully. "Ollivander's really enjoying this whole schlepper thing. Sends me out to do all the nasty work in name of training. Oh, yeah, this should be good, especially with Umbridge here today." With that said, he grinned and kicked off again, the bike disappearing up towards the castle again.

"Well, honestly, how does he _not_ expect us to follow him now?" Sirius asked the others.


	6. UmbridgeBaiting, Part I

**Chapter 6: Umbridge-Baiting, Part I**

"Oh, this should be good," Neville cackled in a very uncharacteristically delighted way. "Pull up a chair, you'll want to watch this," he advised the others. Looking at each other questioningly, Fred and George conjured chairs on the left of Neville, while Remus, Tonks and Lily conjured chairs to the right.

"Has it started yet?" Christiana Rumer asked as she entered.

"Nope, not yet, the students have just finished lunch," Neville replied, looking back.

"What's going on?" Tonks asked.

"Umbridge has taken it upon herself to inspect Hogwarts at the end of every term," Neville explained. "It usually involves trying to find a reason to chuck the 'undesirables' out. She laid off the Muggleborns, can't prove a danger from them – "

"But until Minister Shacklebolt and Head Auror Potter can get the Integration Act passed through the Wizengamot, the halfers are fair play for her," Christiana continued.

"Halfers?" Lily asked. "And who's Umbridge?"

"Dolores Umbridge is the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister," Tonks started to explain, when Lily frowned and looked at Remus.

"The toad woman James is always ranting on about?" she asked. "The one with the weird affinity for kittens and the colour pink?"

"That's the one," Remus nodded slightly.

"All right, never knew her name, carry on," Lily said, returning her attention to Christiana.

"Halfers is our colloquial term for what is generally known as 'half-breed' in less polite societies," Christiana replied. "McGonagall's been taking in students on a case-by-case basis. There are about twenty students at the moment under that category."

"Although Edsvale's made that number diminish to about 15," Neville noted distractedly, readjusting the Audio Magnet.

"Not that Umbridge cares about Edsvale," Christiana pointed out. "Any way, usually when she comes, we've got about 24 hours notice, and by the time she arrives, certain students who shall go unnamed have normally cooked up some harebrained scheme to torment her into leaving early or to try and trick her into actually stepping over the 'hate crime' line."

"We call it Umbridge-Baiting around here," Neville explained. "The Potters are particularly good at it."

"Weasleys aren't half-bad either."

* * *

The Marauders slipped into a corner of the courtyard under the Cloak, watching as Teddy was greeted with cheerful calls from the other Order kids. He replied with equal enthusiasm, dropping his jacket onto the stone railing behind him to reveal a blazing phoenix tattooed on his upper right arm, a lion winding around his left forearm and something that looked vaguely like a string of words from afar wrapping around his right hand, across his palm and down onto his wrist.

"Are we quite sure he spawned from the same gene pool as Remus?" Sirius muttered to the others.

There was a wry laugh from Teddy as he started getting things out of his case, muttering to them under his breath, "I'm informed that I'm more Tonks than Lupin."

"You clearly have never met Andromeda," Sirius replied. "Never met a girl quite as straight-laced as that one."

"Well, yeah, Grandmum's a devil," Teddy agreed. "You obviously have never met Nymphadora Tonks."

"No, no, I haven't," Sirius admitted.

"The pink-haired woman upstairs?" Teddy continued with a slight smile as he looked up at Umbridge entering the courtyard.

"_That_ is Andromeda's kid?" Sirius asked in astonishment.

"Like I said, more Tonks than Lupin," Teddy repeated. "Good afternoon, Madam Umbridge," he greeted mildly.

"Hey, Teddy, you think you could take a look at my wand before the practical this afternoon?" a blond Gryffindor asked as he cut in front of Umbridge, making her screech to a stop and mutter under her breath. "Oh, sorry, Madam Umbridge, I didn't see you there."

"Didn't I just recalibrate this at Easter, Lysander?" Teddy asked with a frown as he took the wand. "What's going on with – "

Blue and red flames came bursting out of the end of the wand without provocation, narrowly missing both Lysander and Umbridge by mere inches. Surprised, Teddy nearly released the wand, which was now humming ominously and quivering in his hand all while sparking. "Okay. Definitely not supposed to be doing that. Merlin, Lysander – "

"You see my dilemma, Teddy," Lysander said gloomily. "I need it fixed before 1."

"I might be able to swing that," Teddy told him. "I wouldn't suggest standing within ten feet of me while I'm working, mind."

"Hey, Teddy, you're early," Lily greeted as she, Hugo, Alyssa and another red-haired girl and blond boy joined them. "Oh, hi, Madam Umbridge. Listen, could you just – "

"My flame throwing wand takes precedence over your petty little problem, Lily," Lysander interrupted. "Thank you _so_ much, Teddy."

"Come back at about ten to, I'll pass you a temporary wand if it isn't done," Teddy replied. "And so help me, Lysander, if you come bursting into the shop this summer with another problem…"

"I promise I will take good care of it this time," Lysander agreed cheerfully. "Thanks!"

"What's going on with Lysander's wand?" Lily asked.

"This," Teddy replied, as the wand's end spit flames in Umbridge's direction again and now starting screeching and whirling.

Lily started laughing. "Is it possessed, do you think?"

"I'm starting to wonder," Teddy muttered darkly. From behind Umbridge, he caught sight of Lysander in stitches with Al and Lorcan, and he knew at that point that there really was nothing wrong with the wand, it probably was another spell of Al's for Umbridge-Baiting.

Might as well play it up for all it was worth. It _was_ pretty ingenious.

"So tell me your petty little problem, Lee," Teddy sighed as he started to strip the wand down.

* * *

Christiana howled with laughter. "I give it an 8. He even had Teddy convinced."

"I know an Albus Potter spell when I see one," Neville laughed. "He's probably got something else in mind, though, if he's getting Lysander to pull it off."

"Well, Scamanders never did do anything last term," Christiana pointed out.

"Yeah, last term wasn't very good for baiting," Neville agreed.

* * *

"Are all girls this mental, Teddy?" Hugo asked in exasperation as Lily cheerfully finished her longwinded, rather plotless story, which had picked up semblances of plot in certain areas when it looked as though Umbridge was trying to cut in.

"Yeah, unfortunately," Teddy replied, now examining the dragon heartstring core of Lysander's wand. "They get worse with age."

"Damn, I was hoping it was just a Lily thing," Hugo muttered.

"Nope," Teddy affirmed. "It's ten to, you lot had better get going to your exam, yeah?" He pulled another wand out of his case and passed it to Lysander, who was coming back around hopefully with his brother and friends in tow. "Still not quite fixed, Lysander. Make sure you wave a little further to the upper left than you do with this one, it's a little finicky and I haven't gotten around to calibrating it again."

"Well, why can't I have yours?" Lysander asked. "Just for the exam?"

"Are you mental?" Teddy exclaimed. "I'm not giving you _my_ wand, look what you did to yours!"

"I promise I'd be careful with it and I'd bring it back right after I'm through," Lysander persisted.

"No," Teddy replied definitively.

* * *

"Yeah, trust Lysander Scamander to milk it for all it's worth," Neville laughed.

"Oh, the poor kid," Tonks said with a shake of her head. "Lysander Scamander. Who came up with that one? It's almost as bad as Nymphadora Tonks."

"It's Lysander Markander Scamander, in full," Neville offered. "Luna was going to name him Nargle-Hunter Moon, but Ginny put her foot down."

"Who comes up with these things?" Tonks laughed again.

"The daughter of Xenophilius Lovegood," Remus said dryly.

* * *

"Fifty pounds, please, for flame throwing wands," Al muttered under his breath to Teddy as Umbridge went stalking off elsewhere in the castle.

"That wasn't worth fifty pounds," Teddy replied in a low voice, drawing his index and middle finger across the roughened wood of Lysander's wand, creating a low droning hum. "And it would be Lysander getting fifty pounds, not yourself. Besides, Jay and Lee and I haven't even had a go yet."

"You're not allowed to Umbridge-bait, remember?" Al protested softly. "Dad forbade you years ago."

"I was forbidden to directly bait her," Teddy corrected, a slight frown creasing his forehead when he tested out Lysander's wand, creating a faint smoke cloud. "Aw, damn, the heartstring's twisted itself. Go to your exam, then, Al."

"So if Al and I were to collaborate and win this round," Jay asked casually, "just so we can prove that being Lily does not afford you goddess status, does that mean you would pay us each fifty pounds?"

"No," Teddy replied easily, twisting the wand carefully around in his hands. "I pay you each twenty-five in that case. And Vic's going to murder me anyway for laying bets."

"Yeah, well, what Victoire doesn't know –"

"Victoire knows everything," Teddy said darkly.

"Not everything," Al said mysteriously, before the students all took off for their exams.

* * *

"Okay, so who is this woman?" James asked, looking around to make sure the coast was clear before he pulled off the Invisibility Cloak.

"Victoire?"

"No, this toad woman hovering about like some annoying administrator," James said impatiently.

"That, my dear Marauders, is Dolores Umbridge," Teddy replied. "Administrator of Dangerous Beings Register, onetime Senior Undersecretary to the Minister and High Inquisitor and Headmistress of Hogwarts. One of the biggest bitches of all time."

"The name sounds familiar," Remus muttered.

"It ought to," James replied quietly. "That's the woman Dad was going on about at Easter. The one trying to force through that werewolf restriction legislation."

"Oh, it passed about mid-90s," Teddy said nonchalantly, looking up briefly when all four faces blanched. "Got thrown out after the war, though. She's still got some power in there, but not much. She's on the hate crime watch list at the Auror's Office. Harry's been waiting for 25 years to chuck _her_ in Azkaban."

"Woman like that, she hasn't done anything yet?" Sirius asked incredulously.

"She's very good at what she does," Teddy replied, and the first hint of anger began to creep into his voice. "Never crosses over the line. Comes disturbing close, puts a toe on it occasionally, but never actually crosses it. And my godfather the moral Auror won't arrest her until she does."

"I suggest you gentlemen return to your Cloak," came McGonagall's warning voice, "with Umbridge out prowling." She emerged into the courtyard, giving the Marauders a stern glance. "Mister Lupin – "

"Say no more, Professor, I promise not to provoke the beast," Teddy replied with a grin, even as he was sending a volley of tiny sparrows from the tip of Lysander's wand, the entire flock speeding towards the re-emerging Umbridge with definite intent. "Oops."

There was an indignant scream from Umbridge, who swatted blindly at the flock until Teddy quickly made them vanish. Then, smoke practically gushing from her ears, she came stalking over.

"Sorry, Madam Umbridge, I hadn't seen you come in," Teddy said, voice shaking with restrained laughter. The concern on his face was a little too carefully composed to be legitimate, though his eyes were narrowed in suspicion. "Are you all right?"

"I trust there will be no further mishaps?" Umbridge asked dangerously.

Teddy laughed. "I can't guarantee that, Madam Umbridge, I'm told I have all the grace and coordination of my mother – "

"Because I would hate to have to put you on my register," she continued vindictively.

"Now, Dolores, let's not – " McGonagall began to warn, when Teddy interrupted her.

"I'm sure, Madam Umbridge, that it would tear your heart apart. Just as much, I'm sure, as it would grieve my godfather to arrest you for hate crime." He pocketed Lysander's wand and got to his feet. "Or have you forgotten the last time you tried to do that?"

Umbridge eyed him suspiciously, but apparently decided not to risk it as she stalked off again.


	7. UmbridgeBaiting, Part II

_A/N: I'm going to try headers for this chapter (suggestion from a few readers getting mixed up with which Fred, which Remus, etc.) to try and help the transition between scenes – it will indicate the scene as well as the time-traveled persons in that scene. Comments and reviews would be appreciated._

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* * *

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Chapter 7: Umbridge-Baiting, Part II

_Headmistress' Office (Adult Remus, Tonks, Lily, Fred and George)_

"When was the last time she tried to do that?" the older Remus asked Neville, his eyes still fixed on the young man in the courtyard. Teddy had dropped back down to the railing to sit, leaning back against a pillar and tossing a stone he'd picked up from the ground back and forth in his hands. Stifling a yawn, he pulled out a pair of earbuds from his pocket and stuck one in his ear.

Apparently the Marauders had decided to stick around under the Cloak, because Teddy was occasionally answering questions that seemed to come from nowhere.

"Remus, just be patient, you're going to ruin the show," Tonks said to him in exasperation. "I'm enjoying this whole Umbridge-Baiting thing."

"Oh! _You're_ telling _me_ to be patient?"

"Nothing'll go on now until the exams finish," Neville replied, as Christiana got up and left again. "Last time Umbridge tried to pull that one over on Teddy… oh, must be close to five or six years ago now." He laughed slightly. "Slightly ironic that Teddy brought that one up, considering he wasn't conscious to see it or hear it."

"What happened?" Lily asked curiously.

Neville sighed, watching out the window for a moment longer before he turned to face them. "Their sixth year, Hayden Rosier managed to come up with some sort of evil concoction. He made it seem like just another provocation – he and Teddy used to be at each other's throats every day – "

"Sounds like Harry and Malfoy," George snickered.

"Sounds like James and Severus," Lily muttered.

"Oh, Harry and Malfoy had nothing on Teddy and Hayden," Neville corrected. "Let's just say we hadn't even left King's Cross their first year before I was breaking up a fistfight, and it all went downhill from there. We had to change classes around midway through first year because the two of them couldn't even be in the same classroom. The rest of the OWL years, we had to make sure Gryffindor and Slytherin were never in the same class at the same time. NEWTs and optional courses were a nightmare. And of course, Teddy managed to exert some self-control later on but that just made Hayden poke harder, which in turn made Teddy snap even worse than he would've originally…"

"Wow," Tonks commented. "How in the world did that happen in the span of ten minutes?"

Neville sighed. "I don't really remember, honestly. The fistfight made sense at the time. I think Hayden had made some disparaging comment about Marcus or something like that." At the blank looks he received from his audience, he explained, "At the time, Edsvale hadn't been discovered. Marcus – the other boy who was in here earlier, the Healer – was a full-blown werewolf, and unlike earlier students and professors – " he nodded briefly in Remus' direction, "every single kid on that train knew who and what he was."

"Wait, what's Edsvale?" Lily asked suddenly.

"Edsvale is a potion discovered just under ten years ago," Neville explained. "It actually reverses the effects of a werewolf's bite rather than alter them, which is what Wolfsbane did."

"Wait, what's Wolfsbane?"

"I think we've gotten off-topic," Remus interrupted. "Umbridge."

"Oh, yeah," Neville said. "Her. Anyway, so Hayden makes this potion. What made it so dangerous was that it was indiscernible from regular water, so nobody thought much when he tossed it all onto Teddy's schoolwork."

"And what did it really do?" Fred asked warily.

"Let's just say he wasn't himself for about 24 hours, and he was out cold for three days after we dug him out of the rubble of the Shack," Neville replied vaguely. "Umbridge jumped at the chance to finally get him. I don't think I've seen Harry that close to killing somebody in my life."

Tonks frowned. "But why wasn't he administered Edsvale before that?"

~*~

_Courtyard (Marauders)_

Teddy laughed as he pulled his earbuds out of his ears and then pried a smaller device out from one ear. "Because you can't cure what you don't have." Dropping the tiny device back into a small velvet bag, he said, "Clearly that invention works just fine."

"What?" Sirius asked.

"Oh, Fred and Jay have me guinea-pig for them on occasion. Latest invention is an eavesdropping device. This little fellow," he continued, shaking the bag slightly, "just pops right into the ear, it's virtually impossible to detect."

"Dude, I am so living in the wrong decade," James breathed in unison with Sirius.

Teddy laughed. "They're going to be multi-billionaires before they graduate at this rate."

There came the sounds of students returning from exams just then and Teddy sat up straight again. The Marauders quickly threw their Cloak on once more, just as Jay and Al both came into the courtyard, locked in a good-natured duel.

"Face it, Al, you're _nothing_!" Jay cackled, dodging Al's hex and returning with one of his own. "Time-out, I want this sweater off now."

"I agree, _you_ work up some heat dueling a clearly-superior being," Al shot back, chucking aside his sweater as well. "_I_, on the other hand, am still as fresh as spring."

Jay popped back up, the sleeveless shirt he had on revealing the same phoenix tattoo on his right upper arm that Teddy had on his. "Your arrogance will be your downfall, Albus Potter! We wouldn't want be trampled by centaurs, now would we?"

Al laughed in return. "I may be arrogant, James Potter, but I'm not stupid enough to go waltzing into the Forbidden Forest and call a herd of angry centaurs 'filthy half-breeds'!"

"Hey, dueling club's started again!" Fred exclaimed in delight as he joined in, tossing his sweater off and coming to Jay's aid. He sported the same phoenix on his right arm as well. "_En guard_, little one, before I dazzle you to death with my shiny white teeth and my incredible good looks!"

"Make sure your wand's pointing in the right direction, there, Gilderoy!" Al shot back, as Louis, Lysander and Ben all joined in. It appeared that this duel was a school favourite, because the students were all gathering around in interest, watching from the railings inside the hallways in the corners of the courtyard. Some were shouting encouragements to one or the other, others placing bets with the younger Weasleys circulating through the crowds.

~*~

_Headmistress' Office (Adult Remus, Tonks, Lily, Fred and George)_

"Oh, oldest one in the book, boys, you're not winning this term's award for originality," Neville groaned as he watched the Potter brothers. "You did that term before last. She's not going to fall for it."

Sure enough, as Umbridge appeared amongst the students and began entering the courtyard, both Jay and Al turned to Lorcan Scamander, watching from near Umbridge's point of entry (where he hadn't been two seconds before, and where Teddy was currently placed), and called, "Think fast, Scamander!", as they shot slightly off-target jinxes.

Umbridge calmly side-stepped the jinxes – and stepped right into Teddy and Lorcan's counter-jinxes. The entire courtyard fell silent in shocked awe, except for a few admiring gasps of appreciation.

"Oh, _Merlin_, Madam Umbridge, I'm so sorry!..." Teddy and Lorcan said immediately and in very believably contrite voices.

"Maybe you should just steer out of my way for the rest of the day, Madam Umbridge, I seem to be having a bit of a klutz day…" Teddy said, even as students were beginning to disperse and the group of duelists were howling silently behind Umbridge's back.

"I am watching you, Lupin, Scamander, you and your families," Umbridge said darkly as she began to turn to leave.

"Watch away, we're not very interesting people," both boys muttered under their breath.

Neville, meanwhile, was howling without reservation. "That was pretty good."

The door to the headmistress' office opened just then and a couple of the professors came in, laughing. "Did you _see_ what they just did to her?" Professor Sinistra asked.

"Not terribly original, but entertaining," Christiana agreed.

"Lily Potter's going to have a hard time beating that one," Neville amended, just as there came a scream of dismay and a resounding crash from the courtyard.

"Did she just barrel into her?" Fred asked interestedly, leaning forward.

"Yeah, she definitely rammed right into her. 'Course, Umbridge isn't that hard a target to _miss_…" George agreed.

"What in the world did she spill?" Tonks asked.

"Looks like some sort of potion, or drink…" Lily replied, and all attention returned to the courtyard.

~*~

_Courtyard (Marauders)_

"She's actually crying," James muttered under his breath to his friends. "Like, bawling."

"I am _soooo_ sorry, Madam Umbridge, I've had the most terrible Potions exam _ever_ and I didn't see you and I just – " Lily cried, making her three brothers and her cousins look at each other, baffled. "I just _know_ I didn't do it right, it was only supposed to be a mild sedative and I think I sent the examiners to the hospital wing and – I don't think they were _supposed_ to turn red and swell up, were they?" she asked her companions, who shook their heads mutely.

Upon closer inspection, Remus noticed, the young girl's hands were coated in sort of liquid substance, a furious red rash and swelling beginning to spread from her hands up her arms. She seemed to be hyperventilating as her distress apparently increased, and a smashed vial lay at her feet, the stain spreading across Umbridge's robes.

"Oh, Merlin, Lily…" Alyssa gasped in unison with the other red-haired girl. "Lily, you spilt it on her!"

"Oh, _Merlin_, this is _not_ my day, could it get any worse?..." Lily sobbed. "Madam, I think you need to go to the hospital wing with me, Professor Slughorn said I screwed it up really bad and the examiner might even have to go to St. Mungo's…"

Umbridge was looking a little panicked as she started to develop the same rash that had since spread towards Lily's neck and face. "What did you do to me, you little brat?" she demanded.

"I don't _know_, I don't _know_, I put in the dried valeweed with the pickled beetle eyes in the hot cauldron the way it _said_…" Lily bawled, now really upset.

James and Sirius both barely managed to retain their snickers. "No wonder she's blowing up," Sirius muttered to the others as Umbridge paled and took off at a run towards the gates.

"I'll go make sure she gets out all right!" one of Lily's companions said, dashing off after her.

Once Umbridge was out of sight, the courtyard burst into laughter and Lily immediately stopped crying, shaking her hair out of her eyes. "Fifty pounds, please, Teddy. Jay, Al, twenty. Lysander, ten. Louis, five. Alyssa, five." She held out her hand expectantly.

"I'm not touching you, you have the Draught of Death all over you!" Teddy exclaimed. "Go wash up, go see Madame Pomfrey. That was way over the top."

"I'm harmless," Lily shrugged. "You don't seriously believe I'd actually _kill_ her? I'll prove it." She wiped her hands off and the rash faded away, the swelling subsided. Alyssa picked up the broken vial without any hesitation, making them vanish. "It only does what you _want _it to do."

Alyssa added. "But don't tell Mady that, she still thinks it's the reason she sleeps at night."

"Hypochondriac Placebo," Lily explained, cheerfully gathering her spoils. "Might as well be water," she grinned. "Did you seriously think I was going to kill my only source of revenue?"


	8. Investigations, Vampires and Werewolves

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** For those of you asking about differentiating the multiple names (i.e. James the Marauder and Harry's son James, the teenage Remus and the adult Remus, Harry's mother Lily and Harry's daughter Lily, Fred the twin and George's son Fred, George the twin and George the adult), I'm going to just give you a list of how they'll be referred to in the text:

**James Potter (Marauder):** James.

**James Potter (Son): **Jay.

**Lily Potter (Mother):** Lily.

**Lily Potter (Daughter):** Lee (for the sake of readers in prose; when characters are addressing her, Lee is _**only**_ used by her brothers as an affectionate nickname – all other characters will be calling her Lily).

**Fred Weasley (Twin) and Fred Weasley (Son):** Unfortunately, I don't have a second name in reserve for George's son. I'll try my best with the aid of the headers to distinguish one Fred from the other.

**George Weasley (Twin) and George Weasley (Adult):** Same goes for George as for Fred.

**Remus Lupin (Marauder):** Remus.

**Remus Lupin (Adult):** Lupin (again, for the sake of readers in prose; of course most characters will be calling him Remus when addressing him).

Hopefully this helps, because I can do no more than this.

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* * *

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CHAPTER 8: Of Investigations, Vampires and Werewolves

_Courtyard (Marauders)_

"That was pretty good," Al admitted with a grumble to Lysander and Ben. "I don't know where she comes up with these things..."

"Al, you shorted me ten pounds," Lee said, returning to her brother. "You owe me twenty. You gave me ten."

"I'm broke!" Al exclaimed. "I don't _have_ ten more pounds to give you!"

Lee narrowed her eyes at him. "You think I'm stupid?" she asked.

"I would answer that one _very_ carefully, Al," Lysander advised.

"If you're not stupid, then you _know_ I don't have any more money," Al replied to his sister easily. "Go away, you're annoying."

"You shouldn't bet more than you have, Al, that's how people go into debt," Jay told him seriously. "And Lee's one hell of a collections agent. Trust me."

"You're rich. Lend me ten pounds."

"Nope. Not while knowing that you can't pay me back."

"Guess I'll just have to have to go, um, owl Mum about what _you_ did in Hogsmeade last trip, Al, unless you come up with the money," Lee continued as she began to meander towards the Owlery. "And something tells me that you're going to get it far worse than Teddy did, because you're not even out of fourth year. _And_, you're a prefect-elect."

"Why does the 'prefect' thing always get brought up?" Al asked in dismay, looking at Teddy. "Seriously, I didn't ask for the badge, it was thrust upon me by powers that be. Help me out?"

"Oh, Al, is she serious?" Teddy asked in interest. "Did you honestly go?"

"Lily Potter, you're a fink!" Al yelled after his sister as he took off. "Don't you _dare_ tell Mum!"

***

_Headmistress' Office (Lupin, Lily, Tonks, Twins)_

Lupin and Lily both burst out laughing. "Now who does he remind you of?" Lily managed to gasp.

"Oh, geez, I don't know," Lupin agreed. "'I didn't _ask_ for the stupid badge.'"

"Sounds mildly like Ron, actually," Fred commented as an aside to George.

"Except Ron was just a little too chuffed about the badge of power," George countered.

"What are they talking about?" Tonks asked Neville, who rolled his eyes. "What's she telling Ginny?"

"You notice that phoenix tattoo the older boys had?" Neville asked; when Tonks nodded, he continued, "Order rules – the parents, of course, and mostly Ginny – say you have to wait until you're 17. Clearly Al decided to bribe Jesse into doing it earlier – must've begged him, Jesse normally does that free of charge and he's pretty tight on Order rules." He grinned slightly and laughed. "It only takes Ginny tearing a strip into you once."

"That's a tradition?" Lily asked curiously.

"Yeah, all the Order kids over 17 have them. They have a very strong sense of civic duty, those kids. Pretty inevitable, I suppose, when your aunt/mother's the founder and head of the Social Services Department, your uncle/father's the head of the Aurors' Department, your whole damn family was in the Order of the Phoenix and practically everybody is named after _somebody_ killed in the war."

"They may have a sense of civic duty," Harry growled irritably as he entered the office, "but they're some of the stupidest kids I've ever seen not under chemical influence."

Neville looked at him for a second, a slight smile on his face. "Have you _seen_ your kids' grades lately? Like as in at any point in their academic careers?"

"I didn't say they weren't intelligent. I said they were stupid. There's a difference." When Neville cast him a questioning glance, Harry continued, "Guess who's now under investigation for the latest round of alleged hate crimes at Hogwarts?"

"Umbridge-Baiting, you mean?" Neville asked. "I'm not sure I'd classify it a hate crime..."

"I didn't hear you just admit to the truthfulness of allegations of one Dolores Umbridge as to students and staff of Hogwarts being for the warpath for her blood and her life," Harry commented dryly.

"No, you didn't," Neville agreed lightly. "Why are _you_ under investigation?"

"Because I may not be accountable for Teddy and Jay's actions anymore, but I _am_ still accountable for Al and Lily. And she's _really_ pissed at Lily. She's in St. Mungo's now, screaming that she's dying and the Healers don't have a clue how it happened."

"Lily dumped Hypochondriac Placebo on her; Umbridge is just greatly exaggerating as usually. She's not going to die," Neville replied. "She might be uncomfortable until she finally figures it out..."

"That's mildly encouraging," Harry sighed. "I've still been de-wanded, and it sucks. I have to go do this discipline thing Ginny keeps insisting I ought to learn sometime. But I suppose I should probably pass along the information to Lavender at St. Mungo's first."

"Why can't Ginny do the discipline thing, then, if she's so much better at it?" Neville asked curiously.

"Ginny left for Hungary this morning on a story hunt," Harry replied as he was heading back out the door again. "Apparently Viktor and an old rival from Durmstrang are going at it. Excuse me while I go ream out my hellion children."

***

_Gryffindor Common Room (present-day children, no time-shifts)_

"But – " Al started to speak up, before Harry held up a hand.

"Shut up and listen before I strangle one of you," he said tersely. Immediately, they all fell silent. "Now, I am no more a fan of Dolores Umbridge than she is a fan of me. I understand that the whole lot of you lean towards the practical joke sort of thing. That I don't mind. _Landing her in the hospital_? _That_ was excessive!"

"It was Hypochondriac Placebo, Dad, she's _not_ actually dying!" Lee burst out before she could stop herself.

"LILY NYMPHADORA!" Harry thundered. Lee fell silent again, scuffing her shoe against the carpet. "I get that. Regardless, you've caused her serious medical harm, and she's pressing charges! Do you lot understand what I'm telling you?"

"You – you mean, she's accusing us of h – " Jay began to say incredulously.

"Yes, James, hate crime!" Harry exclaimed. "You guys were all given very clear instructions: find out what went wrong with those blasted mirrors, and fix it. But instead of doing so, you spent the night screwing around with plots to create more trouble! Did it ever occur to you that we need to fix this before it puts the whole damn world in jeopardy?!"

"We're sorry, Uncle Harry," Fred said quietly.

"Sorry doesn't cut it, Frederick," Harry said tersely. "Now, you all know I hate to pull the Head Auror card, but you leave me no choice. I am placing you _all_ under house arrest. You are not to leave this tower except for exams and meals. I am confiscating your cameras, your iPods, your Wiis, your DVDs and your cell phones. You are all going to be _very_ well-acquainted with your little notebook there, and the little mirrors you were making. You need to get a hold of somebody, send a message with one of the other guys to Professor Longbottom. Potters, Weasleys, Dursleys, Krums and Scamanders are restricted to Gryffindor Tower, and no, I don't care if you're a Gryffindor or not."

"But Uncle Harry!" Rose exclaimed. "We weren't all involved!"

"What did _we_ do?" both Gregor and Svetlana Krum exclaimed.

"Rose, you were collecting bets right along with the rest of them," Harry said. "Greg and Lana, you didn't stop them. You stay. You work until you drop of exhaustion. You find a solution. You _fix_ this."

_***_

_Headmistress' Office (all time-shifts)_

As Harry came storming back into the office, carrying a rather heavy-looking bag on his shoulder, Neville turned around.

"Somebody's in a mood," he commented. "What's in the bag?"

"All possible distractions confiscated from the kids," Harry said tightly, "and have I mentioned already that I've been de-wanded pending a formal investigation and there's a Death-Eater running around free out there _while_ I'm stuck being useless? I think I'm entitled to a mood at the moment." He set down the bag, and started rubbing his temples. "Merlin, I'm already getting a migraine..."

Neville frowned at him. "There can't possibly be a Death-Eater out there. It's got to be a kid shooting up fakes for kicks."

"No, we caught _him_. Bawled all the way to Azkaban. The first three Dark Marks were his doing. The three Dark Marks after that were genuine. Complete with bodies."

"So it wasn't Malfoy, then?" Neville asked. Harry shook his head.

"Still keeping him in Azkaban for good measure. But there's somebody else out there. We've checked with Transylvania, all the guys that were there are still there." Harry sighed tiredly. "They would be, of course, it'd be too easy otherwise and then I wouldn't have to pull out my old cloak again."

"What old cloak?" George asked before he could stop himself. "Not the Invisibility Cloak? Don't tell me that your totally awesome cloak has been sitting useless in a closet."

"Oh, hell no, I use that thing all the time. No, my Saviour-of-the-World cloak. It's been all crumpled up and hiding in a corner of the attic gathering dust for the last twenty-some-odd years," Harry replied.

"Oh, _that_ cloak."

***

Later that evening, Harry went to go check on the kids' progress. He was partway to Gryffindor Tower, in company of Lupin under the Invisibility Cloak, Teddy and Neville, when one young Gryffindor screeched to a halt in front of Neville and gasped out, "Professor Longbottom, Lily said to tell you that Jay and Fred and Louis think they've might've found something."

Lupin took a look at the student, trying to see if he could spot the family in his face. The boy was probably in his first or second year, so his parents had probably been at school with Harry and the rest of them. His skin was almost pure white, though he had slightly pink cheeks from his dash from Gryffindor Tower. His eyes were bloodshot, the hazel irises streaked with bright red, Lupin noticed as the boy began to squint in the light of Harry, Teddy and Neville's wands and the hallway lamps. His blonde hair lay flat against his head, curling slightly at the edges of his ears and his neck. His facial features were small, carefully-crafted, as though he were a porcelain doll. He looked like a child at least three or four years younger. When he spoke, his words were pronounced with the utmost care, a slight lisp interfering.

The boy backed off into the shadows of a nearby alcove, and the squint began to fade. "Professor, I'm sorry, do you mind – "

"Oh, I'm sorry, Blair, I'd completely forgotten your eyes aren't as used to light as Lysander's," Neville apologized, immediately extinguishing his light as Teddy and Harry did the same. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, yeah, I am," Blair said softly as he ventured back out into the hallway. "It wouldn't have been so bad, but Lily made me stay in the courtyard all afternoon with them. You can see that, I suppose," he added.

"Listen, you go on ahead, back to the Tower, and tell them that we're on our way. You're looking paler than normal, Blair, are you sure you're all right?"

"Yeah, yeah, I ran out of Pops yesterday, I forgot to place my order in time and it hasn't come in from Honeydukes yet. Lysander says he'll pass on some of his, since he doesn't use them as much," Blair continued to ramble, his voice beginning to take on an edge of fear and desperation. "I'm fine, Professor Longbottom, really I am."

"Blair, I would get those tonight," Neville replied gently. "Don't worry, you're not in trouble. Goodness knows I forget things all the time. I just don't want any accidents, that's all. Go on, then."

The young boy nodded and dashed off ahead of them again, and Lupin asked softly, "So who was that? He didn't look familiar."

"That's Blair Nichmorester, one of the second-years," Neville replied quietly.

"Nichmorester as in the vampire coven Nichmorester?" Lupin asked in astonishment. "Merlin, there's running a risk, putting vampires inside Hogwarts…"

"You know, they said the same thing about werewolves," Teddy commented, an uncharacteristically terse tone in his voice. Lupin looked at his grown son in astonishment – had he seriously just said that to his own father?

"Werewolves are one thing," Lupin said tightly. "One night out of the month, they're dangerous. Vampires, it's twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week."

"But if we're going to be specific like that, werewolves are actually _more_ dangerous, because they can't control themselves. When was the last time you heard of a _vampire_ killing somebody when they bite?"

"Teddy, go catch up with Blair," Harry ordered quietly, pushing his godson ahead. The young man did as instructed, disappearing around the corner as Neville and Lupin both looked at Harry.

"What's gotten into him?" Neville asked incredulously.

"I don't know," Harry sighed, turning the corner to the portrait of the Fat Lady. "But you of all people know he's always been touchy about comments like that. Even when he was a kid, he couldn't stand people discriminating against any group," he explained to Lupin. "I think the point he was trying to get across was that one group is no more dangerous than the other group. Granted, he could've said it in a nicer way… What's the password?" he asked Neville.

"Peacetime," Neville told the Fat Lady, who smiled.

"Yes, it's almost holidays. Go on, then." She swung open and the sounds of students deep in the throes of problem-solving met their ears.

Teddy had joined Fred, Jay and Louis around the table, examining their scribbled notes and the prototype lying there. Blair had disappeared out of the bright common room, but they could still see his small figure standing in the shadows at the boys' dormitory staircase. The rest of the kids had all gathered around the table to watch.

"Behold the latest child of our collective genius," Fred was laughing, as Lysander was picking up the mirror to examine it. "The Wonky Mirror 3.0."

"Catchy," Al laughed. "I like it."

"You know, I'm pretty sure I remember Ginny saying _not_ to make another one," Teddy commented, even as he was picking up the mirror. "So how does it work?"

"Play with your shinies _after_ you've fixed your screw-ups," Harry interrupted harshly, taking the mirror out of Teddy's hands. "Fred, Jay, talk. You have ten minutes."

Both boys immediately launched into a long spiel of complicated arithmancy formulas and intricacies, referencing often back to their scribbled-in and well-loved notebook and what sounded like previous inventions.

Harry finally interrupted. "All right, guys. Care of Magical Creatures and Divination. Sixth-year education. Will it work?"

"It should," Fred relented. "We just have to angle it for the right time."

"Probably sometime tomorrow evening," Jay quickly added.

"What do you need to do?" Harry asked, a look of regret immediately crossing his face as the two boys re-launched their highly-technical explanations. Cutting in again, he repeated, "Sixth-year education. Sleepwalked through most of it."

"It'll work," Teddy assured him, as Fred and Jay exchanged frustrated glances. "You do your thing, we'll do ours."

"If you're wrong about this…" Harry warned him, "I'm telling Andromeda."

"About what?" Teddy asked warily.

"About the tattoo you don't think I know you got." When Al snickered from the other side of the table, Harry added, "As for you, keep on my good side and I may decide _not_ to tell your mother about _your_ tattoo that you don't think I know you got."

Al shut up.

***

As they were all heading back to the Tower to update the rest of the crew, Lupin was attempting not to ask the questions burning inside of him. What good would it do him to find out what happened after he was gone? Did he really want to know whether his son hated him for what he'd done to him, or was he better off clueless?

He desperately wanted to know that he hadn't made a big mistake out of that last year of his life.

Harry was casting occasional sidelong glances in his general direction. Finally, the man he still saw, in some remote way, as a 17-year-old kid who'd grown up too fast, said, "Ask. I know they're burning." At the surprised silence that followed, Harry added, "You hide your burning curiosity about as well as your kid."

"Okay, I'm _not_ that bad," Teddy protested, even as Harry was exclaiming,

"You spent the first six years of your life asking nothing but questions!"


	9. A Changing World

A/N: Sorry, plot won't be moving too quickly for a while. I've managed to drown myself in the sheer number of characters that I've abandoned the reflections I usually try to incorporate into my stories, and I'm trying to slow down and 'kill' some of them off – NO WORRIES! I'm not actually killing anybody (yet, LOL, I think I'll make you sweat for a while). But yeah, an attempt at slowing down and reflecting in the next few chapters. Basically, each of the chapters is through the eyes of various characters. In those cases, I'm just referring to them by their given names, not appointed names (i.e. in this one, both the teen and the adult are referred to as Remus).

**Chapter 9: A Changing World (Remus Lupin)**

_ADULT_

How was it even possible that the world could have changed so much? It was as though he'd been dead centuries, not decades.

There were days Remus Lupin swore he'd lived too long, and he was pretty sure this experience ranked right up there on his evidence for that theory. True, 23 years was a long time: 23 years before 1998, he was 15 and attempting valiantly to rein in his wild best friends to keep from losing his new prefect's badge. 23 years ago, the love of his life was a toddler, just a name thrown around sporadically in the rare instances Sirius discussed his family. 23 years ago, the world had been simple.

But to see the world he thought he'd finally figured out turned so crazily sideways and upside down: vampires, werewolves, and all manner of abnormal wizardry at Hogwarts, out in the open for the world to see and to know? Was the world _brainwashed_? It was impossible, simply impossible for an entire world's opinions to change that much in so short a timeframe!

In the world he knew, you didn't announce abnormality to the public, you hid it, you tried to blend in as well as you could. Those who were a danger removed themselves from society. You didn't try to fight the rules. You had no way of obtaining power or control in any way, shape or form.

Listening to Harry's children, to Teddy, to their classmates in Gryffindor Tower tonight had only intensified his doubts. Laughing about the things even recklessly irreverent James and Sirius wouldn't have dared touch with a twenty-foot pole: about how the little vampire Blair would soon be forced to drink his own blood if Lysander didn't pass him a Blood Pop and soon. About how Kingston, one of the fourth-year students, had finally developed tolerance for Wolfsbane and had kept practically the whole school up at the last full moon with her howls and screams and crashes. How Morgan, one of the sixth-years, had managed to twist around the future so badly in an attempt to put off breaking up with his girlfriend that all the NEWTs and OWLs had been written a term early, those students had left for vacation early and most everybody had failed and were forced to come back to school and rewrite them when the situation had been rectified…

Sure, James and Sirius had poked fun at his werewolf status. But it usually had been restricted to an occasional comment about his 'furry little problem' and the rare wolf crack. They both knew and understood very well that it wasn't something to make light of: Remus could easily slaughter the both of them on any given full moon, or if he got angry enough.

This casual integration of the abnormal into everyday life just wasn't done. Even the most progressive of people knew that there were certain subjects that were just taboo.

***

_TEENAGER_

What was really weird was how at ease his adult self looked when the young pink-haired woman – _what was her name again? Something only a Black would name their child_ – came over to him from her conversation with Lily and sat down easily next to him, shaking her hair out of her eyes. She leaned over his shoulder and murmured something in his ear. He sighed and replied something softly.

How long ago had he met her? She didn't seem all that much older than he himself was right now. How long had they been together? What had finally made him crazy enough to subject another person to life with a monster?

***

_ADULT_

"You're thinking too much again," Dora murmured into his ear, her body warm against his side. "Stop thinking so much."

"Why?" he asked softly.

"Because it always seems to result in you walking away," she replied quietly, and the dagger pierced his heart. "Forgive me for not liking it when you do that."

"All right, sorry," Remus murmured back to her.

"So what was it this time?" she asked. "What deep, profound, life-changing thought was running through your mind this time?"

Remus sighed as she searched his face with those hopelessly penetrating blue eyes. "Nothing much, I suppose. Just thinking that this whole world's changed, and I'm not entirely sure it's for the better."

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. Then she glanced back over at the teenage Remus for a moment and said, "This is Remus the self-sacrificing-stupidly-chivalrous-lycanthropic-masochist Lupin rearing his head again, isn't it?"

"You _do_ have a way with words," Remus commented drily as she sighed in annoyance and leaned back against the wall.

"Well, I _could_ shorten it and just call you a self-serving bastard," Dora shrugged. "Sounded grander the other way. What's bringing this on?"

***

_TEENAGER_

And what about that other boy – Ted, had they called him? His son? What the hell kind of hallucinogenic potion had he been on? A _kid_?

Clearly, his genetics had screwed the kid up. You only got those sorts of brutal scars from werewolf claws – he of all people knew that better than anybody, having not only felt the injuries, but having inflicted a few onto his best friends in the last few years.

"Oy, you think too much," came James' voice beside him, and a sharp prod on each of his arms in perfect sync interrupted his train of thought. "Shut off your brain already."

"You make us feel stupid," Sirius agreed from the other side. "Don't think so much." Remus rolled his eyes and sighed heavily.

"What are you pondering anyway?" James asked, looking at him. "You're not pondering mischief without us, are you?"

"Good little prefects like Remus don't ponder mischief," Sirius disagreed. "That's best left to incorrigible rogues like us." He grinned at his friends. "Come on, Remus, don't make us get creative. Tell us what you were pondering."

Remus paused for a moment. "I'm thinking that I went flying off the deep end," he finally replied, making a slight gesture in the direction of his adult self.

James and Sirius both exclaimed in unison, "Ladies and gentlemen, the one around whom the whole world revolves!" Then they both knocked the back of Remus' head.

"Listen, mate, I hate to break it to you," Sirius continued, "but the world does not revolve around you, and you're not half as stupid as you think you are."

"You overthink _everything_, Remus," James agreed, his intense eyes watching the pink-haired young woman across the room, who was watching them with the same intense interest. "Maybe you stopped thinking for once. It'd make a nice change, you might actually get out, live life and enjoy it."

Remus opened his mouth to protest again, and Sirius and James poked him again. "Don't be so argumentative," they said in unison.

***

_ADULT_

"It's actually sort of cute," Dora told him with a laugh, leaning back against the wall. "It's like a tag team. Do you notice it now, watching it for yourself?"

"Yeah, I noticed," Remus replied. "I noticed the first time Sirius tried to hit me without James hitting me too. Never did feel quite the same. He stopped trying after a while."

"That's true, isn't it?" she said thoughtfully. "I realize now I never did see Sirius hitting you like that." There was silence for a moment, before she said, "So what do you think?"

"About what?" he asked.

"About Teddy," she said. "What do you think? I don't think Harry did a half-bad job. Even if he _did_ apparently let Teddy jump off roofs." She grinned at him momentarily. "Even though I'm pretty sure I'd have let him do the same thing."

"I did _not_ encourage that roof-jumping incident!" Harry called defensively from the doorway, where he was sitting on the ground, doing paperwork. "No matter what Ginny tells you."

"So?" Dora pressed again.

"I think that he turned out a pretty respectable member of society," Remus finally admitted. "Wouldn't know it to look at him – "

Dora laughed. "But then again, you wouldn't know I'm a die-hard enforcer of law to look at me either. You're such a conservative."

"I was thinking it was probably better he turned out more like you than like me, actually," Remus agreed. "He's definitely much more open-minded."

"Why?" Dora asked.

"Teddy definitely told Remus off for discrimination earlier," Harry called.

"Hold on, here," Dora exclaimed. "The discriminated-against werewolf is a discriminatory werewolf? Do explain," she said to Remus expectantly.

Remus sighed. "I may have said that vampires were more dangerous than werewolves."

"May have?" she prompted.

"All right, I did say it," Remus corrected himself. "Did he really need to go off at me like that?" he asked Harry.

"Well, the whole discrimination thing is a trigger for that kind of reaction for all the Order and DA kids, though," Neville said softly. "Marcus was a werewolf – and there's still people around that still think of him as one, even if he doesn't transform any more. Lysander's a vampire – one of Blair's brothers bit him a year ago in retaliation for some stupid teenage stunt. Victoire – "

"Oh, yeah, I guess between Bill and Fleur…" Dora said.

"No, actually, has nothing to do with that," Neville corrected. "Suppose that might've triggered some of it, though…"

Harry got up and joined them. "I'm tired of yelling at people from across rooms. What were we discussing?"

"Victoire," Neville told him. "And why discrimination makes the kids mad."

"What's wrong with her?" Dora asked. "Didn't look – "

"No, it's nothing visible," Harry replied. "Nothing too visible, any way. Usually. You caught her on a really good day yesterday. She's got mental problems."

"She's not the easiest person to deal with on a day-to-day basis," Neville agreed. "She's bipolar, and she's also got obsessive-compulsive disorder. The bipolar aggravates the OCD, and for some reason the magical therapies actually makes them worse in her."

"So she's on Muggle therapies, but they aren't really a very good solution, because she's so severely affected by both of those disorders," Harry continued. "The magic negates some of the efficacy of the medication. We think that she's always had the OCD, because she had her little rituals even when she was a kid. The bipolar started surfacing her seventh year."

"It got so bad we had to send her to St Mungo's," Neville said. "She'd get so manic that her magic would be going everywhere without any sort of control, she was up all night, every night for days on end, her train of thought was running so fast that she couldn't keep up with herself. She'd barely have half of one sentence out before she was off and running with another idea. Her essays didn't make any sense whatsoever. And then without any warning, she'd lose complete interest in everything and you couldn't get her to get out of bed for anything."

"And that was just the bipolar," Harry said. "Her hands were practically raw from all the washing and the disinfecting she was doing. She was sending owls to Teddy three times a day. And I remember that because he came home early from his trip, he was so worried about her. That was before Jay and Fred managed to figure out how to make cell phones work in magical vicinities. Now she just calls him or texts him a hundred times a day."

"The other students thought she was stark raving mad," Neville continued quietly. "It got really ugly for a while when she was in the hospital. Before a brilliant Healer figured it out, there were a lot of people who thought she ought to be locked up or kissed by a Dementor or something to put her out of society entirely."

"There _were_?" Harry said derisively. "There still are." For a moment, he rolled his eyes. "We are nothing if not controversial in this family."

***

_ADULT_

The sun was slowly setting, and after fielding what must've been a hundred calls from various people on what Harry explained was something called a 'cell phone' – "an instant means of communication with everybody on the bleeding planet", Harry had left to go back into London and the Ministry, his face grimmer than it had been the first time.

"So?" Dora asked softly as she nestled down against his side to fall asleep. "D'you think it was worth it? Dying? D'you think it made a difference at all?"

Remus looked at her for a moment, his arm curved around her back as he relished the warmth of her body against his. "Yeah, Dora, I do. I think it made all the difference in the world."

"M'kay," she murmured drowsily. "That's good."

Looking over at where his teenage self was still watching them, he sent a slight smile in his direction.

***

_TEENAGER_

Yeah, maybe he hadn't screwed up. And as Remus Lupin fell asleep, the familiar queasy feeling of a full moon approaching in his stomach, he knew that if he was going to die, he was going to die a happy man.


End file.
